The Democratic Party used to be the party of blue collar America- supporting laws and policies that benefitted that segment of the U.S. population. Their leaders may still claim to be advocates for American working families, however their duplicitous actions that betray American workers and their families, while undermining national security and public safety, provide clear and incontrovertible evidence of their lies…. MICHAEL CUTLER …FRONTPAGE mag

WASHINGTON, DC (May 31, 2016) — An analysis of new government data by the Center for Immigration Studies shows more than 3 million new legal and illegal immigrants settled in the United States over the course of 2014 and 2015 – a 39 percent increase over the prior two-year period. (The Census Bureau groups data like this to preserve anonymity.) The number of arrivals fell to a low in 2010-2011, but has dramatically rebounded and is now above pre-recession levels. The Center estimates that 1.1 million of the arrivals are new illegal immigrants and 2 million are new legal immigrants. Cutbacks in enforcement, an improved economy, and the expansive nature of our legal immigration system likely have all contributed to the rebound.

The Center for Immigration Studies’ Director of Research and the lead author of the report, Dr. Steven Camarota, observes, “The numbers show that Mexican immigration has rebounded somewhat and there has been a dramatic rise in immigration from Asia and the rest of Latin America.” Camarota also points out that, “Given the enormous number of immigrants settling in the country, it is certainly understandable that immigration levels are a central issue in the presidential election.”

New data collected by the Census Bureau shows that 3.1 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) entered the country in 2014 and 2015, an average of more than 1.5 million annually.

In 2012 and 2013, 2.3 million immigrants arrived, or about 1.1 million annually. In 2010-2011, 2.1 new immigrants arrived, or about 1 million annually.

All of these numbers are based on publically available information in Census Bureau data; no adjustments have been made for those missed by the bureau. But even without adjusting for undercount, the scale of new immigration is enormous.

The big increase in new arrivals in the last two years was driven by a rise in immigration from Latin America (particularly countries other than Mexico), South Asia (e.g. Pakistan and India) and East Asia (e.g. China and Vietnam).

Of the 3.1 million immigrants who arrived in the last two years, we estimate about one-third – 1.1 million, or 550,000 annually – were new illegal immigrants, a 57 percent increase from the 700,000 (350,000 annually) who entered in 2012-2013.

The above estimate of illegal immigration represents the flow of new illegal aliens surreptitiously crossing the border or overstaying a temporary visa or released into the country after a short detention, such as families from Central America. The numbers do not represent the net increase in the total illegal immigrant population.

The available evidence also indicates that the number of new legal immigrants arriving from abroad has increased, both temporary and permanent. Our best estimate is that the arrival of legal immigrants increased about 30 percent, from 1.6 million in 2012-2013 to 2 million in 2014-2015.

We’ve got an even more ominous enemy withinour borders that promotes “Reconquista of Aztlan”or the reconquest of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas into the country of Mexico.

THE LA RAZA MEXICAN CRIME TIDAL WAVE half the prison population in CA and half the murders are by MEXICANS

The Narrative Collapse on
Immigration

The numbers of arrivals, legal and illegal alike,
are rising, not falling.

‘The
immigration crisis that has roiled American politics for decades has faded into
history.”

That was the lede of a New York Times op-ed four years
ago that neatly summarized the preferred narrative of supporters of amnesty and
unlimited immigration. This was reinforced by a Pew study that found “More
Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.” (though it arrived at that headline
only by counting the U.S.-citizen children of the immigrants as
“Mexicans”).

The storyline was that mass immigration was a phase we’d now
finished with. Thus any continued agitation about amnesty or border enforcement
or job competition could only be naked racism.

Oops.

The newest
data from the Census Bureau show a surge in total immigration over the past two
years. In 2014 and 2015, 3.1 million new foreign-born people moved here, or
about 1.5 million per year. This is up from the 2.3 million in the prior
two-year period, and 2.1 million in 2010–2011.

Of the 3.1 million who
immigrated over the past two years, about a third were illegal aliens — about
550,000 per year (up from 350,000 illegals entering per year in 2012–13).
Two-thirds, or 1 million a year, were legal, up from about 750,000 a year in the
prior two-year period.

(The total number of immigrants grows inexorably,
but not by as much; new arrivals are always partly offset by departures and
deaths, and the number of specifically illegal immigrants is also checked by the
number who attain legalization.)

One element of the narrative remains
true: Mexican immigration is way down. From a million new arrivals from Mexico,
legal and illegal, in 2004–05, the number for the past two years has fallen to
about a third of that. But that hasn’t translated into a drop in immigration
overall, because there’s a whole world of potential migrants beyond Mexico; the
number of arrivals from the rest of Latin America has more than doubled since
2010–11, and the number from Asia has risen nearly 40 percent.

The Census
Bureau data doesn’t tell us why immigration has increased so dramatically, but
it’s probably been caused by the combination of modest improvement in the U.S.
economy and Obama’s dramatic cutback in enforcement.

Several conclusions
flow from these new numbers. First, the illegal-immigration problem isn’t
magically going away on its own. The assumption that it was led to the argument
for tying up the remaining loose ends with an amnesty and forgoing enforcement
measures such as border fences, E-Verify, and the rest. The claim was never
plausible to begin with, but a lot of amnesty-pushers seem to have actually
believed it. Even the slowdown in immigration from Mexico isn’t necessarily
permanent; it’s up about a third from the low point of 2010–11 and will probably
jump a lot more the next time there’s an economic crisis there, unless we put in
place the necessary preventive measures now.

Second, immigration is not a
purely economic phenomenon driven simply by the business cycle. The weakest
recovery in generations, with record numbers of Americans having dropped out of
the labor market altogether, is still accompanied by dramatic growth in new
immigration. As Europe is also discovering, there are hundreds of millions of
people abroad who want to get to the civilized world regardless of the state of
the economy there.

Finally, a related myth that is debunked is the claim
by supporters of increased immigration that, if only legal admissions were
increased, illegal ones would drop. The new numbers show that illegal settlement
rose dramatically in 2014–2015 at the same time as the number of legal
arrivals did. Legal and illegal immigration are complements, not competitors.
The only way to really get rid of illegal immigration is to abolish immigration
limits altogether — that way, everyone who wants to come will be able to do so.
This scenario, unlimited immigration, is implicit in all “market-driven”
immigration proposals, but their backers won’t admit to it because they know
that the public would recoil. In fact, there is no plausible level of legal
immigration that can eliminate illegal immigration.

These numbers suggest
how narrow the debate over immigration is in the presidential campaign. While
Trump’s written immigration platform is pretty sophisticated, in his public
appearances he focuses almost exclusively on the “wall,” when most immigration
is actually legal, and even most of the new illegal immigration comes from visa
overstays, not border jumpers. Hillary, of course, is hopeless, embracing what
amounts to Angela Merkel’s immigration platform by explicitly saying that she
would deport no one who hasn’t been convicted of a violent
crime.

Whatever the outcome of the campaign, these immigration numbers
make clear that we can never “put the issue behind us” or “get it off the table”
or whatever cliché timorous Republican politicians turn to next. As much as tax
policy and foreign policy, immigration policy is a permanent feature of
political debate.

40% of Federal Criminal Cases in 2013 Were in Districts on Mexican Border

As Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council testified on Capitol Hill recently: “The cartels understood that the unaccompanied minors would force the Border Patrol to deploy Agents to these crossing areas in order to take the minors into custody. I want to stress this point because it has been completely overlooked by the press,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. The unaccompanied minors could have walked right up to the port of entry and requested asylum if they were truly escaping political persecution or violence. “Why did the cartels drive them to the middle of the desert and then have them cross over the Rio Grande only to surrender to the first Border Patrol Agent they came across?” Judd challenged.

“The reason is that it completely tied up our manpower and allowed the cartels to smuggle whatever they wanted across our border.”

This is just another maddening example of Obama’s warped priorities at work. Instead of building effective walls and enforcing our borders to prevent the coming illegal immigration waves manufactured by criminal racketeers, this administration rushes to build welcome center magnets that shelter the next generation of Democrat voters.

Here’s what we already know from local media reports in Norwich, the city of about 40,000 residents where the murder occurred; the DHS agency responsible for deporting illegal immigrants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), failed to remove Jacques at least three times dating back to 2002. As if this weren’t atrocious enough, Jacques spent 17 years in prison for attempted murder before authorities released him—instead of deporting him—in January of 2015, the Norwich Bulletin reports. Six months later the 41-year-old illegal alien convict stabbed 25-year-old Casey Chadwick to death. Police said Chadwick died of sharp forced injuries to the head and neck. Jacques is being held on a $1 million bond.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. In the last few years illegal immigrants with lengthy criminal histories have been allowed to remain in the U.S. despite being repeat offenders. Judicial Watch has investigated several of the cases and obtained public records from the government. For instance, back in 2008 JW launched a California public records request with the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department to obtain he arrest and booking information on Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador who murdered three innocent American citizens. Ramos was a member of a renowned violent street gang and had been convicted of two felonies as a juvenile (a gang-related assault on a bus passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman) yet he was allowed to remain in the country.

The Obama administration is a menace to the rule of law and our nation’s sovereignty. A strong statement but, arguably, a charitable one in light of today’s exclusive report on the border chaos from our Corruption Chroniclesblog:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents, Border Patrol sources tell Judicial Watch. The government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road.

The OTMs are from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala and Border Patrol officials say this week’s batch was in custody for a couple of days and ordered to call family members in the U.S. so they could purchase a bus ticket for their upcoming trip from Phoenix. Authorities didn’t bother checking the identity of the U.S. relatives or if they’re in the country legally, according to a Border Patrol official directly involved in the matter. American taxpayers pick up the fare for those who claim to have a “credible fear,” Border Patrol sources told JW. None of the OTMs were issued official court appearance documents, but were told to “promise” they’d show up for a hearing when notified, said federal agents with firsthand knowledge of the operation.

A security company contracted by the U.S. government is driving the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix, sources said. The firm is called G4S and claims to be the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida. Judicial Watch is filing a number of public records requests to get more information involving the arrangement between G4S and the government, specifically the transport of illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to other parts of the country. The photo accompanying this story shows the uniformed G4S guard that transported the OTMs this week from Tucson to Phoenix.

Outraged Border Patrol agents and supervisors on the front lines say illegal immigrants are being released in droves because there’s no room to keep them in detention. “They’re telling us to put them on a bus and let them go,” said one law enforcement official in Arizona. “Just move those bodies across the country.” Officially, DHS denies this is occurring and, in fact, earlier this year U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske blasted Border Patrol union officials for denouncing this dangerous catch-and-release policy. Kerlikowske’s scolding came in response to the congressional testimony of Bandon Judd, chief of the National Border Patrol Council, the labor union that represents line agents. Judd told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that illegal immigrants without serious criminal convictions can be released immediately and disappear into the shadows. Kerlikowske shot back, telling a separate congressional committee: “I would not stand by if the Border Patrol was — releasing people without going through all of the formalities.”

Yet, that’s exactly what’s occurring. This report, part of an ongoing Judicial Watch investigation into the security risks along the southern border, features only a snippet of a much broader crisis in which illegal aliens are being released and vanishing into unsuspecting American communities. The Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest addressed this issue just a few weeks ago in a hearing called Declining Deportations and Increasing Criminal Alien Releases – The Lawless Immigration Policies of the Obama Administration. Judd, the Border Patrol Union chief, delivered alarming figures at the hearing. He estimated that about 80% of apprehended illegal immigrants are released into the United States. This includes unaccompanied minors who are escorted to their final destination, family units and those who claim to have a credible fear of persecution in their native country. Single males that aren’t actually seen crossing into the U.S. by Border Patrol agents are released if they claim to have been in the country since 2014, Judd added.

The rule of law has collapsed on our border and the Obama administration, along with a do-nothing Congress run by Republicans, is responsible for it. Innocent Americans, taxpayers, the victims of human trafficking, and our nation’s sovereignty all suffer as a result. Through our investigations, lawsuits, and independent journalism, your Judicial Watch will continue to stand for the rule of law and for honest Americans who want the government to enforce the law, not to subvert the law.

I estimate that enforcing the law and deporting all illegals would raise real low-skill wages by about 20% to 40% within 6 years, providing immediate relief to the oppressed low-skill citizens of our country. (See my notes.) Allowing in more high-skill people and few low-skill people would have long-term benefits that would eventually tower over this short-term benefit. A more skilled population would increase the historical trend of economic growth in this country. We might even become the richest per capita country in the world.

There is a close long-term correlation between low-skill wages and illegal immigration. An influx of low-skilled labor drives down wages at the bottom of the income scale, aggravating the wage gap and social divisions, providing fodder for left wing demonization of the prosperous and successful.The normal equilibrating capacity of a market economy is short circuited when the influx of low-skill illegal immigrants is nationwide. If American workers could easily escape to another country offering higher wages, then wages in the USA would quickly recover from a surge of immigrant workers, and employers would gain only a short-lived benefit. So, it might not be worth paying off politicians to import cheap labor from poor countries.

Miami Wages after the Mariel BoatliftHarvard professor George J. Borjas has been called "America’s leading immigration economist" by BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal. The good professor recently surprised himself and outraged many of his pro-immigration colleagues with a study measuring the dive in wages for low-skill natives in Miami after the Mariel boatlift of 1980. Private boats brought more than 100,000 Cubans to Miami within 5 months. The data displayed in the graph below shows what happened.

In 1980, Miami low-skilled wages (blue line) were already trending at 94% of those in the rest of the USA. (orange line). Then Miami wages were hammered down by the Mariel boatlift. If that event had not occurred, Miami wages presumably would have followed the gold line (Reference), which is 94% below wages outside of Miami. If so, we get the following wage gap (Gap) between the gold (Reference) and blue (Miami) lines:Gap = (Miami - Reference) / Reference

The wage gap (Gap, blue line) hits -0.35 in 1986, which means wages dropped 35% below where they would have been if the Mariel event had not happened. Then the Gap closes back up near zero by 1990. The red line is the output of my Gap predictor, which I described in a previous article. Also, see my notes. The simple Gap predictor assumes an immediate reaction in wages, but in reality the reaction takes several years to occur (6 years in this case). The predictor also assumes almost all the resident low-skilled workers will take a 39% pay cut without moving out of the job market. That is not going to happen for long in an American city like Miami, surrounded by higher-paying job markets. The Gap predictor works fairly well for the US as a whole because there is no foreign country where a low-skill worker can get enough of a pay raise to make it worth the move. So, the wages stay depressed for about 40 years, until the immigrant workers retire.It is easy to say that immigrants can upgrade their schooling and training and thus reduce the surplus of low-skill labor. In practice, it is usually very difficult, especially while raising kids. For example, Senator Marco Rubio’s father spent his career mostly as a hotel bartender. He was also a street vendor, security guard, apartment building manager and crossing guard. Rubio’s mother worked as a maid and Kmart store clerk. They stayed in low-skill jobs over their entire working careers. Their children did very well, however. If the children of immigrants do as well as the children of natives, then the depression of low-skill wages goes away unless more low-skill workers are brought into the country. If the children and grandchildren of a large class of immigrants remain low-skill workers like their parents, then my simple Gap predictor no longer works and we are left with a persistent underclass of people who continue to cause a surplus of low-skill workers and thus continue to depress low-skill wages.Unfortunately, this is the case for most of the illegal immigrants that are continuing to pour into the country.Another Permanent Underclass?If the illegals are allowed to stay, the effects will be dire, according to the findings of Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis. “Immigration to the United States … rarely changes one’s social status,” he concludes after extensive study and many published works. His recent book is about the tendency of descendants within a family to stay in the same social class as their ancestors.Clark writes,

“... the social status of Latinos, even those born in the United States, is persistently low… they are often the people who found themselves in such desperate economic circumstances at home that they preferred to live as illegal immigrants in the United States. (Latinos constitute nearly half of the foreign born in the United States, but four in five of illegal migrants.) The effects have been dire: there can be no doubt that immigration is widening social inequality in the United States.”

Professor Clark suggests a less disastrous immigration policy:

“To avoid having a substantially poorer and less educated Latino underclass for many future generations, [the US] should considering policies to increase the number of highly educated Latino immigrants.”

But if current immigration policy is continued, the “United States is likely to soon have the unprecedented situation of fostering a semi-permanent underclass.” This lack of social mobility from one generation to the next is a result that no government uplift program has been able to erase, according to Clark’s study of government efforts in Sweden, the US, and elsewhere.This means that my simple wage formula will underestimate the negative wage effects of illegal immigration, because the formula assumes that the effect is limited to the 40-year career of immigrants but not their descendants. A society over-loaded with low-skill workers will have lower wages in that category until the surplus disappears, which in this case might be generations away.I estimate that enforcing the law and deporting all illegals would raise real low-skill wages by about 20% to 40% within 6 years, providing immediate relief to the oppressed low-skill citizens of our country. (See my notes.) Allowing in more high-skill people and few low-skill people would have long-term benefits that would eventually tower over this short-term benefit. A more skilled population would increase the historical trend of economic growth in this country. We might even become the richest per capita country in the world.

There is a close long-term correlation between low-skill wages and illegal immigration. An influx of low-skilled labor drives down wages at the bottom of the income scale, aggravating the wage gap and social divisions, providing fodder for left wing demonization of the prosperous and successful.

The normal equilibrating capacity of a market economy is short circuited when the influx of low-skill illegal immigrants is nationwide. If American workers could easily escape to another country offering higher wages, then wages in the USA would quickly recover from a surge of immigrant workers, and employers would gain only a short-lived benefit. So, it might not be worth paying off politicians to import cheap labor from poor countries.

The Mariel Boatlift event provides a demonstration of this. Wages were hammered down in a local economy (Miami) by a flood of refugees and then recovered as workers scattered to surrounding areas with higher wages. The whole process took 10 years.

Miami Wages after the Mariel Boatlift

Harvard professor George J. Borjas has been called "America’s leading immigration economist" by BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal. The good professor recently surprised himself and outraged many of his pro-immigration colleagues with a study measuring the dive in wages for low-skill natives in Miami after the Mariel boatlift of 1980.

Private boats brought more than 100,000 Cubans to Miami within 5 months. The data displayed in the graph below shows what happened.

In 1980, Miami low-skilled wages (blue line) were already trending at 94% of those in the rest of the USA. (orange line). Then Miami wages were hammered down by the Mariel boatlift. If that event had not occurred, Miami wages presumably would have followed the gold line (Reference), which is 94% below wages outside of Miami. If so, we get the following wage gap (Gap) between the gold (Reference) and blue (Miami) lines:

Gap = (Miami - Reference) / Reference

The wage gap (Gap, blue line) hits -0.35 in 1986, which means wages dropped 35% below where they would have been if the Mariel event had not happened. Then the Gap closes back up near zero by 1990.

The red line is the output of my Gap predictor, which I described in a previous article. Also, see my notes. The simple Gap predictor assumes an immediate reaction in wages, but in reality the reaction takes several years to occur (6 years in this case). The predictor also assumes almost all the resident low-skilled workers will take a 39% pay cut without moving out of the job market. That is not going to happen for long in an American city like Miami, surrounded by higher-paying job markets.

The Gap predictor works fairly well for the US as a whole because there is no foreign country where a low-skill worker can get enough of a pay raise to make it worth the move. So, the wages stay depressed for about 40 years, until the immigrant workers retire.

It is easy to say that immigrants can upgrade their schooling and training and thus reduce the surplus of low-skill labor. In practice, it is usually very difficult, especially while raising kids. For example, Senator Marco Rubio’s father spent his career mostly as a hotel bartender. He was also a street vendor, security guard, apartment building manager and crossing guard. Rubio’s mother worked as a maid and Kmart store clerk.

They stayed in low-skill jobs over their entire working careers. Their children did very well, however. If the children of immigrants do as well as the children of natives, then the depression of low-skill wages goes away unless more low-skill workers are brought into the country.

If the children and grandchildren of a large class of immigrants remain low-skill workers like their parents, then my simple Gap predictor no longer works and we are left with a persistent underclass of people who continue to cause a surplus of low-skill workers and thus continue to depress low-skill wages.

Unfortunately, this is the case for most of the illegal immigrants that are continuing to pour into the country.

Another Permanent Underclass?

If the illegals are allowed to stay, the effects will be dire, according to the findings of Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis. “Immigration to the United States … rarely changes one’s social status,” he concludes after extensive study and many published works. His recent book is about the tendency of descendants within a family to stay in the same social class as their ancestors.

“... the social status of Latinos, even those born in the United States, is persistently low… they are often the people who found themselves in such desperate economic circumstances at home that they preferred to live as illegal immigrants in the United States. (Latinos constitute nearly half of the foreign born in the United States, but four in five of illegal migrants.) The effects have been dire: there can be no doubt that immigration is widening social inequality in the United States.”

Professor Clark suggests a less disastrous immigration policy:

“To avoid having a substantially poorer and less educated Latino underclass for many future generations, [the US] should considering policies to increase the number of highly educated Latino immigrants.”

But if current immigration policy is continued, the “United States is likely to soon have the unprecedented situation of fostering a semi-permanent underclass.” This lack of social mobility from one generation to the next is a result that no government uplift program has been able to erase, according to Clark’s study of government efforts in Sweden, the US, and elsewhere.

This means that my simple wage formula will underestimate the negative wage effects of illegal immigration, because the formula assumes that the effect is limited to the 40-year career of immigrants but not their descendants. A society over-loaded with low-skill workers will have lower wages in that category until the surplus disappears, which in this case might be generations away.

I estimate that enforcing the law and deporting all illegals would raise real low-skill wages by about 20% to 40% within 6 years, providing immediate relief to the oppressed low-skill citizens of our country. (See my notes.) Allowing in more high-skill people and few low-skill people would have long-term benefits that would eventually tower over this short-term benefit. A more skilled population would increase the historical trend of economic growth in this country. We might even become the richest per capita country in the world.

DOJ Wants to Hide the Names of Illegal Aliens Granted Amnesty

Hans von Spakovsky / June 02, 2016
The Justice Department is resisting a judge’s order to provide ethics training for its lawyers and is objecting to turning over to the court the names of illegal aliens who were granted what amounts to administrative amnesty (“deferrals”) in stark violation of an injunction issued by the court.

On May 19, Judge Andrew Hanen of the of the Southern District of Texas issued an order imposing sanctions on the Justice Department and its lawyers for unethical conduct, which included repeatedly lying to him in court.

U.S. v. Texas is the immigration lawsuit filed by 26 states against the Obama administration over its plan to provide deferrals, work permits, and other government benefits to almost 5 million illegal aliens. Hanen issued a preliminary injunction in February 2015 preventing implementation of the plan.

His decision was upheld by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and the case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Hanen issued his sanction order because of the misbehavior of Justice Department lawyers when the case was before him. He severely rebuked the DOJ for claiming that the president’s plan was not being implemented prior to his issuing his injunction order when the government knew that it was being implemented—to the tune of over 100,000 aliens. When he found out, he ordered the government to reverse its behavior and void these deferrals.

Amongst the sanctions Hanen ordered on May 19 was yearly ethics training for five years for every DOJ lawyer stationed in Washington who appear in any of the courts of the states who filed the lawsuit. He also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to provide him (under seal) with a list of all of the aliens who had been given benefits under the amnesty plan in violation of his injunction.

However, on May 31, the Justice Department filed a motion with Hanen asking him to stay (or suspend) his sanctions order while DOJ appeals his decision to the 5th Circuit. The Justice Department claims in its brief that with regards to the required ethics training, Hanen’s determination that the DOJ’s lawyers engaged in “intentional misrepresentation” was reached “without proper procedural protections” and that there was not “sufficient” evidence of the misrepresentations.

Given the extensive evidence that Hanen cited in his order of the misrepresentations made by the government lawyers, as well as the extensive opportunity he gave the DOJ to present its side in the briefs it filed with the court, the claim that the DOJ was somehow unfairly judged or unable to present its defense is extremely dubious.

The DOJ also claims that the “sanctions imposed exceed the court’s authority.” Given the severity of the violations of the code of professional conduct that govern lawyers, including government lawyers, this is another problematic claim by the department.

Given that the judge could have imposed even more severe sanctions, such as dismissing the defensive pleadings filed by the government (which would have caused them to lose the case) or making the government pay the attorneys’ fees of the states, the sanctions imposed seem almost mild.

Of course, they are highly embarrassing given what they reflect about the behavior of DOJ lawyers. But according to the Justice Department, Hanen is interfering “with the attorney general’s executive authority” in imposing ethics training and the other requirements that Hanen laid out, such as filing a comprehensive plan within 60 days “to prevent this unethical conduct from ever occurring again.” Apparently, that is too much to ask of the attorney general.

The strangest claim made by the Justice Department is that Hanen’s order to produce a state-by-state list of all of the illegal aliens unlawfully granted deferrals would “breach the confidence of these individuals (and of others who submit information to USCIS) in the privacy of such records.”

An affidavit filed by León Rodriguez, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security, claims this would violate the internal privacy policy of DHS even though he admits the federal Privacy Act “does not apply to non-U.S. persons.”

Not only does the Privacy Act not apply to “non-U.S. persons” (Illegal aliens), but federal law (8 U.S.C. §1373) specifically requires the federal government to provide “citizenship or immigration status” information on any individual in response “to an inquiry by a federal, state, or local government agency.” And this requirement applies “notwithstanding any other provision of federal, state, or local law.”

Thus, states are statutorily entitled to this information and the DOJ’s claim that it is confidential has no basis in the law whatsoever. Of course, this very inconvenient federal provision is not mentioned in the Justice Department’s brief.

This action by the Justice Department makes it clear it intends to appeal Hanen’s sanctions order. Whether he will grant the requested stay is unknown, but he had ordered a hearing on the DOJ’s request for June 7.

So far in this litigation, the Justice Department and the Obama administration have had a steadily losing hand. We will have to see if that continues.

JOBS AND BILLIONS IN WELFARE.... THESE WERE ONLY STEPS TO BUILDING OBAMA'S MUSLIM DICTATORSHIP!

"This analysis has the economic facts precisely backwards: Economic growth benefitted Americans up and down the income distribution until the Great Recession. Since then, Americans have struggled considerably.""The president argued his administration deserves credit for the recovery thus far. If so, he has engineered the weakest recovery of the post-war era." "The shrinking of the American middle class is a pervasive phenomenon," said Rakesh Kochhar, associate research director for Pew and the lead author of the report. "It has increased the polarization in incomes."

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:THE TRANSFERRING OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY TO WALL STREET, THE RICH and MILLIONS OF JOBS FOR ILLEGALS ALONG WITH BILLIONS IN WELFARE.................. WHERE IN AMERICA IS IT OTHERWISE?!?

"Today, workers in Rockford confront the

many problems generated by the

concentrated crisis of capitalism. The barriers

to overcoming poverty among Rockford-area

workers include rising health care costs,

severe housing cost burdens, lack of good

quality jobs, high utility costs, high

transportation costs and poor public

education and job training."

OBAMA'S CRONY BANKSTERS SUCKING

THE BLOOD OF THE NATION!

“People are living under bridges and in abandoned

buildings,” she added. “Meanwhile, the banks are charging $7

a day for overdraft fees. By the time they take $7 a day, you

ain’t got any income left. They stuck me with a $39 fee.

They’re robbing the disabled and poor. It’s highway robbery.”

Portrait of the social crisis in America: Rockford, Illinois

By George Gallanis and George Marlowe 4 June 2016

Ninety miles northwest of Chicago sits Rockford, the third largest city in Illinois. Like many former urban industrial centers spanning the upper Midwest of the United States, Rockford belongs to the American “Rust Belt.” After decades of robust industrial and manufacturing output, the city has seen a large decline in jobs, a decay in infrastructure and a rise in unemployment and poverty.

Officially chartered as a city in 1852, Rockford initially grew on the basis of its connection to Galena, at the time a major manufacturing center in Illinois, and the Chicago Union Railroad. According to an article entitled History of a “Rust Belt” City published on museumofthecity.org, Swedish furniture collectives in the 1880s marked the beginning of the ascent of Rockford as an industrial center. During the first half of the 20th century, Rockford was transformed into the second largest furniture manufacturing center in the United States. At the same time, thanks to its auspicious location in a highly productive agricultural area and its direct connection to Chicago via rail, Rockford developed a manufacturing base focusing on the production of agricultural machinery.

As the 20th century unfolded, Rockford’s industry diversified from agricultural products to machine tools, heavy machinery, automotive products, fasteners, packaging and even aerospace. Its position as a major industrial hub made it attractive to immigrants looking for jobs and economic security. Rockford’s mostly Scandinavian settlers were joined by Italians, Eastern Europeans and African-Americans relocating from the South as part of the “Great Migration.” They would later be followed by Asian, Latino and other ethnic groups.

As World War II ended and America experienced a post-war boom, the country’s infrastructure expanded. Roads and freeways etched their way throughout the country. In Rockford, these roads had a permanent impact on the layout of the city. Divided into eastern and western halves by the Rock River, which bisects it, Rockford had experienced relatively equal growth on both halves up to the 1950s. However, the construction of Interstate 90 just beyond the eastern part of the city shifted the balance and conditioned all future growth and development.

Rockford’s western area has seen very little growth in the past few decades and has become racially segregated, with most of the city’s African-Americans and Hispanics living there. Abandoned industrial buildings are scattered throughout both halves, but Rockford’s southwestern section has seen the most neglect and now comprises the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods.

The development of technology and industry led to a more auto-centered lifestyle. As a result, many industrial buildings in the center of the city fell into disuse. Some are still standing today as industrial fossils. Structures such as the 13-story Amerock building, as the History of a “Rust Belt” City article notes,“ became impractical as the central location did not have sufficient surface parking to accommodate employees, meaning, like many companies, they relocated out of the area or to newer facilities on the edges of the city.”

As in other parts of the country, especially those regions centered around manufacturing hubs such as Detroit and Chicago, the post-war boom provided a higher standard of living for workers in Rockford. But with the globalization of capitalist production in the latter part of the 20th century, the process of deindustrialization engulfed cities such as Rockford.

More recently, the 2008 housing and financial crash shattered Rockford’s housing market. The Wall Street Journal in 2013 described Rockford as the “underwater mortgage capital of America.”

The 2008 crisis dealt a devastating blow to Rockford’s working class. The official unemployment rate in 2010 reached a peak of 19 percent, and nearly 30 percent of the city’s population fell below the poverty line at one point.

Today, workers in Rockford confront the many problems generated by the concentrated crisis of capitalism. The barriersto overcoming poverty among Rockford-area workers include rising health care costs, severe housing cost burdens, lack of good quality jobs, high utility costs, high transportation costs and poor public education and job training.

Presently, the poverty rate for African-Americans is 43.3 percent. Part-time workers have a poverty rate of 32.2 percent. For black men between 20 and 24, the unemployment rate is 70 percent. In the absence of stable jobs, many young men turn to drugs, alcohol and crime.

Two residents of the Luther Center housing complex in Rockford spoke to a WSWS reporting team.

“A lot of people are out of work,” one said. “There are a lot of homeless. There aren’t any jobs here.

“It’s getting worse. There’s too much crime. We see it all the time on the news. It happens everywhere in Rockford. Not just the West Side. It happens in town as well.”

The official unemployment rate dropped to a post-recession low of 6.9 percent in 2015 and has since steadily climbed back up, reaching 7.6 percent in March of 2016. There are currently nearly 12,673 people officially unemployed. As in many other parts of the country, however, the dip in the unemployment rate in Rockford is largely due to a fall in the labor force participation rate: workers are disappearing from the work force (moving away, retiring or no longer looking for work). In 2015, according to Labor Department data, Rockford was one of 20 metropolitan areas in the country where unemployment fell because the work force shrank.

According to one analysis of the last 20 years, Rockford’s job growth peaked in 2000 with 165,700 people employed. There has been negative net job growth in the area since then, with 12,200 jobs lost between 2000 and 2009. By 2009, Rockford employment leveled out at 142,200, with only 11,300 jobs added since then.

Greg, a worker who grew up in Rockford, told a WSWS reporting team, “I work in Madison even though I live here because there aren’t any jobs here. I drive 50 miles a day. Nothing is getting better.

“I noticed when I was getting a little older how bad things were getting. It’s poverty. When I was young, I didn’t know that. Things ain’t the way they use to be. When you have no jobs and no opportunity, what else is there to do? You go down the wrong road.

“Some kids turn out good, [but] the majority of them end up in the streets and in jail. And you have to live with those consequences and the decisions you make because of poverty.”

Asked about the current presidential candidates and the never-ending wars being waged by the US across the globe, he commented, “They’re all going to do the same thing. I thought it would be good when Obama got into office. He was supposed to make positive change, but it wasn't. Your country cares nothing for you, why are you dying for it?”

The WSWS team visited the Shelter Care Community Soup Kitchen in the northwest part of downtown Rockford, where it spoke to two residents, a woman who went by the name of Ms. Megan and her friend Gayle.

“The truth is, down here, from the mayor on down, there is so much crime, including the police department,” Gayle said. “The judges, the attorneys, they’re doing the crime. The community is going to keep being the way it is.”

BLOG: OBAMA'S BIGGEST CRONY BANKSTERS, JP MORGAN, CHASE, WELLS FARGO and BANK of AMERICA ALONE SUCK OUT OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY MORE THAN $6 BILLION JUST FROM "OVERDRAFT" FEES!“People are living under bridges and in abandoned

buildings,” she added. “Meanwhile, the banks are charging $7a day for overdraft fees. By the time they take $7 a day, you ain’t got any income left. They stuck me with a $39 fee. They’re robbing the disabled and poor. It’s highway robbery.”

Her friend, Ms. Megan, commented, “I went from Chicago to Aurora, back to Chicago, and now I’m here in Rockford. They’re pushing all the homeless people out. They’re pushing them out here, pushing them out in Milwaukee. They’re pushing them out in Kenosha, they’re pushing them out everywhere.

“It’s about the whole community. It’s across the nation. All communities, all nations need to be pulling together. It doesn’t matter about the culture. It’s about us human beings pulling together.”

Much of the rise in suburban poverty
is due to the impoverishment of working families already living there. The
decline in manufacturing, the Great Recession, and widespread foreclosures have
left many longtime suburban families reeling

Obama to American youth: Stop complaining, things have never been better!

By Niles Niemuth17 May 2016

Niles Niemuth is the Socialist Equality Party's candidate for vice president in the United States
US President Barack Obama used his commencement address Sunday at Rutgers University in New Jersey to express contempt for those who are supporting either the campaigns of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or self-proclaimed socialist Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders.
While the media has focused on Obama’s thinly-veiled swipes against Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Mexico border and his foreign policy, more significant was the president’s clear rebuke of students and others for supporting Sanders.

The conclusion to be drawn from his speech is that workers—and particularly youth—need to stop complaining and do what they are told. Obama insisted, in what has become his mantra, that things have never been better in America and chastised young people for supporting calls for a “political revolution.”

In a reference to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has promised that if elected he will “Make America Great Again,” Obama insisted that social and economic conditions have never been better than they are now. “In fact, by almost every measure, America is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, or even eight years ago.”

Among other trends, Obama cited the decline in crime rates, teenage pregnancies, the percentage of people living in poverty and an overall increase in life expectancy as proof that life in America is better than it has ever been. He also cited the fact that a greater share of Americans have a college education and more blacks and Latinos sit on corporate boards and hold political office than ever before.

In the course of his remarks, Obama complained that access to the Internet and smart phones has “in some ways… made us more confident in our ignorance… We have to agree that facts and evidence matter. And we got to hold our leaders and ourselves accountable to know what the heck they’re talking about.”

It would have been appropriate for someone in the audience to have shouted out at this point, “Physician, heal thyself!”

Obama’s rose-colored account flies in the face of the reality of life confronted by the vast majority of Americans in 2016. Over the last eight years workers have experienced declining incomes and wages, and rising death rates among working class men and women due to an increase in suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholism. Entire cities and regions have been devastated by decades of deindustrialization, with the rate of poverty higher than ever in urban and suburban areas across the country.Obama was addressing an audience that is part of a generation saddled with more than $1.3 trillion dollars in student loan debt. The first generation worse off than their parents, millions of college graduates who entered the job market after the 2008 economic crisis are either unemployed or underemployed, with an average student loan debt of $30,000.A majority of individuals with onerous debt payments are unable to afford to buy a car, buy their own house and many delay getting engaged or married. A recent poll found that 77 percent of respondents found it more difficult to live due to their student loan debt.After eight years of the candidate of “hope and change,” a period in which 95 percent of income gains (since 2009) have gone to the top one percent, there is a general sense that the entire political system is rotten and the economic order is rigged.
Obama’s remarks expressed concern within the ruling class not over Sanders himself, who is working to redirect opposition back into the Democratic Party. Rather, it is over the anti-capitalist sentiments that are motiving an overwhelming turn out among young voters for the self-declared socialist.He lectured students with a potted version of history in which activists and organizers engaged in “alliance-building and deal-making” are the source of all social progress in America. Lest they get ny ideas, Obama warned his young audience that change “didn’t happen because some apolitical revolution occurred.”

Even as Obama argued that social and economic conditions in America are better than ever, he insisted they could be even better if only more people, especially students, voted in even greater numbers for the Democrats! He cited 2014 voter turnout, which was the lowest since the World War II era, and warned that “apathy has consequences.”

Obama cynically counseled the students to “have faith in democracy,” by which he meant they should support a political set-up entirely controlled by and subservient to the interests of the wealthiest individuals and corporations. The accusation that those who do not vote are apathetic is slander. The general sentiment is not apathy, but hostility and anger over a corrupt two-party system over which Obama himself presides.

In an additional jab at students, Obama went on to criticize protests at Rutgers over a previous announcement that Condoleezza Rice, one of George W. Bush’s secretaries of state, would speak at a commencement. That students should object to having to listen to a war criminal upon their graduation is, according to Obama, an outrageous violation of the principle that is is necessary to “listen to those who don’t agree with you.” Obama perhaps worried that he could be the object of similar protests and denunciations in the not-so-distant future.

Even as he admitted that “big money in politics is a huge problem,” he cynically asserted that “the system isn’t as rigged as you think, and it certainly is not as hopeless as you think…if you vote and you elect a majority that represents your views, you will get what you want. And if you opt out, or stop paying attention, you won’t. It’s that simple.”

It was apparently lost on the president that the history of his own administration is ample proof that the anger and hostility he sought to counter is, in fact, entirely justified.

"The slump in major chain store sales reflects the impact of a vastreordering of class relations in the US, accelerated in the aftermathof the 2008 financial crisis, that has benefited the rich and thesuper-rich and devastated large sections of the working population.The policies of the Obama administration, Congress and theFederal Reserve—flooding the financial markets with virtually free cash while imposing brutal cuts in social programs andwages—have facilitated a further growth of financial parasitismand speculation."

"Corporate profits and CEO pay have soared not on the basis ofproductive investment, but rather through new forms of financialgambling and the inflation of stock prices. The result is a furthergrowth of social inequality and a deepening of the crisis of the realeconomy."OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: The rich get super rich illegals get our jobs and billions in welfare!This analysis has the economic facts precisely backwards: Economic growth benefitted Americans up and down the income distribution until the Great Recession. Since then, Americans have struggled considerably.

"This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon."

The president argued his administration deserves credit for the recovery thus far. If so, he has engineered the weakest recovery of the post-war era.

President Barack Obama at Concord Community High School in Elkhart, Indiana, on June 1. (Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/UPI/Newscom)

President Barack Obama took an economic victory lap in Elkhart, Indiana, on Wednesday.

In a major speech he argued his policies have brought the economy back. He blamed remaining economic weaknesses on trends preceding his administration.

This analysis has the economic facts precisely backwards: Economic growth benefitted Americans up and down the income distribution until the Great Recession. Since then, Americans have struggled considerably.

Obama argued his policies have brought the economy back. While labor market conditions have certainly improved from the depths of the recession—the official unemployment rate has even returned to pre-recession levels—these numbers do not tell the whole story.

BLOG: IN THE LAST TWO YEARS MORE THAN 3 MILLION ILLEGALS HAVE CLIMBED OUR BORDERS, JOBS AND VOTING BOOTHS.

Millions of working-age Americans stopped looking for work during the recession. Many have not returned to the labor market. The working-age labor force participation rate remains 2 percentage points below pre-recession levels. The government does not count these ex-workers as unemployed— even if they would have jobs in a stronger economy.

This explains why the unemployment rate has officially recovered in the Elkhart metropolitan area despite it still having fewer jobs today than in 2007.

Workers also take significantly longer to find new jobs today. The average jobless worker still spends over six months unemployed. This recovery has gone far slower than the White House promised when proposing Obama’s recovery plan.

… where we haven’t finished the job, where folks have good reason to feel anxious, is addressing some of the longer-term trends in the economy—that started long before I was elected—that make working families feel less secure. These are trends that have been happening for decades now and that we’ve got to do more to reverse.

This argument rewrites economic history.

Until the recession family incomes were growing up and down the income ladder. Congressional Budget Office data show market incomes for the middle quintile of (non-elderly) households grew by a third between 1979 and 2007.

Other academic economists estimate higher middle class income growth over that period. Market incomes for families in the bottom quintile grew even faster—by more than 50 percent.

Unsurprisingly, most Americans were happy with the state of the economy then. In February 2007, Gallup polled Americans‘ perceptions of the state of the economy. Forty-three percent said “excellent” or “good.” Only 16 percent answered “poor.”

Then the recession hit and the recovery dragged on. Between 2007 and 2011, middle class households’ market incomes dropped by a tenth (the Congressional Budget Office data only goes through 2011). More Americans today tell Gallup they think the economy is in poor shape than in excellent or good condition. It’s hard to blame this newfound dissatisfaction on long-term trends.The president argued his administration deserves credit for the recovery thus far. If so, he has engineered the weakest recovery of the post-war era.

As a research fellow in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation, James Sherk researches ways to promote competition and mobility in the workforce rather than erect barriers that prevent workers from getting ahead. Read his research.

"The incompetent Presidency of Barack Obama has critically

damaged our country, but the havoc was supposed to end and

recovery to begin in January 2017. Now it seems that the

ordeal will continue for at least another four years, since the

probable Republican and Democrat nominees are both unfit to

serve as our president. The America we have known and seek

to restore may not survive this additional adversity."

Warnings of slump in US economy

By Nick Beams28 May 2016

Despite an upward revision in the Commerce Department’s estimate for first-quarter economic growth, the US economy continues to show signs of a far-reaching stagnation. The Commerce Department said Thursday that US gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of .8 percent, up from its earlier estimate of .5 percent.

Even though the upward revision was lower than expected, and pointed to a growth rate almost indistinguishable from stagnation, the result prompted media comments that the American economy appears to be “picking up speed” and the economic situation was “better than had been thought.”
Regardless of such proclamations, key indicators point to deepening trends toward economic stagnation in both the short and long term.

On Wednesday, technology company Microsoft announced 1,850 job cuts in its smartphone division, then on Thursday retailer Sears reported a loss of $471 million, after revenue fell by over 8 percent.Next month will mark the seventh anniversary of the period of economic expansion that began with the official end of the recession in 2009—the fourth-longest recovery since the end of World War 2. But it is the slowest post-recession expansion in the post-war period.

The main factor is the fall in business investment, the key driver of economic growth in the capitalist economy.

“Spending on some of the building blocks of business—such as machines, computers and steel—is slipping,” an article in the Wall Street Journal noted. “Such expenditures are an important ingredient in improving employee productivity, workers’ wages and corporate profits. A lack of investment risks trapping the economy in a low-growth mode.”

The Commerce Department reported that orders for non-defence capital goods, excluding aircraft, an indicator of business investment, fell by 0.8 percent in April, bringing the total decline since April 2014 to almost 12 percent.

Well-known economic forecaster Diane Swonk told the Wall Street Journal it was “disturbing that businesses’ cash flow has improved dramatically and they have access to cheap debt, but they’ve deployed that on dividends and buybacks instead of investing in the future.”

Earlier this week, a report by Moody’s pointed out that US non-financial corporations were sitting on a cash stockpile of $1.7 trillion, almost one-third of it held by five major hi-tech US companies, a significant statistic given that these firms are regarded as a major driving force of the US economy.
The lack of business investment in the real economy, as opposed to financial speculation, finds expression in productivity data.

In a speech on Thursday, reviewing trends in the US economy, Jerome Powell, a Federal Reserve Board governor, noted that labour productivity in the US had increased by only 0.5 percent a year since 2010, the slowest five-year growth rate since World War 2 and about one quarter of the average post-war rate. He noted that this was a trend that extended across the world economy.

The productivity slowdown is expected to continue, with the Conference Board, a major US economic think tank, warning that it could go negative this year for the first time in more than three decades.

According to Powell, estimates of the long-run potential growth of the US economy have dropped from 3 percent prior to the financial crisis to 2 percent “with much of the decline a function of slower productivity growth.”

A key factor in holding back productivity in recent years, he said, was the meagre growth in the business sector’s capital stock, consistent with “the weak recovery in demand.” But other longer-term factors may also be at work. Powell pointed that the so-called total factor productivity (TFP) growth, regarded as a measure of the impact of technological innovation, was also falling.

“A broad decline in the dynamism in our economy may also be contributing to lower TFP. There is strong evidence that the slowdown in TFP growth in the United States preceded the financial crisis, particularly in sectors that produce or use information technologies,” he said.

In other words, there is a basic dysfunction in the workings of the American economy in which the cycle of business investment in the expectation of higher profits leads to higher productivity, economic expansion, resulting in further investment, has broken down.

Other economists, most notably former Clinton treasury secretary Larry Summers, have pointed to the development of secular stagnation—a situation which characterised the decade of the 1930s—in which the supply of savings continually outstrips the demand for investment, because of diminished profit expectations, leading to low growth, falling productivity and even outright contraction.

While not directly referring to this phenomenon, Powell alluded to it, posing the question: “What if the pessimists are right and productivity growth remains low for another decade, or indefinitely? The consequences would include lower potential growth and relatively lower living standards. Our longer-term fiscal challenges would be significantly greater.”

The long-term slowdown in the US economy is both contributing to the ongoing stagnation in the global economy and is in turn impacted by it. But there is no relief in sight from this quarter and no prospect at all of coordinated action by the major economic powers to stimulate global demand. In fact, the G7 summit meeting, which concluded on Friday, revealed that the divisions among them are widening.

The summit communiqué noted that since the last meeting of the group in April 2015 “downside risks to the global economic outlook have increased” and that “weak demand and unaddressed structural problems are key factors weighing on actual and potential growth.” There were also “potential shocks” of a noneconomic origin—a reference to the increasingly tense geopolitical situation.

But while it noted that risks had increased, the G7 moved further away from trying to combat them.
The G7 communiqué stated that global growth “is our urgent priority” but then laid out a meaningless set of words to cover over the differences between the participants.

“Taking into account country-specific circumstances,” the communiqué stated, “we commit to strengthening our economic policy responses…and to employ a more forceful and more balanced policy mix, in order to achieve a strong, sustainable and balanced growth pattern.”

The communiqué allows Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to claim that he secured some movement on his demand for global stimulus measures while enabling Germany and the UK, the main opponents, to point to the reference to “country-specific circumstances” in order to continue their austerity agendas.

It was, as the Financial Times noted, another example of the work of G7 resolution drafters who are “masters at the art of creating apparent agreement where none exists.”

As the summit was taking place, new data from Japan pointed to the global deflationary trends that have increasingly gripped its economy. The consumer price index for April fell by 0.3 percent in the year to April, following a decline of 0.1 percent in March with indications from preliminary forecasts that it will show an even larger decline next month.

Falling prices will put increased pressure on the Bank of Japan to further ease monetary policy and may even lead to direct intervention by government authorities in currency markets to lower the value of the yen in an effort to boost the economy, despite warnings from the US against such action and a declaration in the G7 communiqué that countries should not engage in competitive currency devaluations.

YOU WILL NOT HEAR FROM EITHER PARTY ABOUT POVERTY FOR LEGALS IN THIS COUNTRY.

"These indices, along with a raft of reportsexposing different aspects of the acute socialcrisis gripping the country—declining lifeexpectancy and rising mortality rates, recordrates of suicide and drug addiction, sinkinghousehold incomes for the vast majority ofurban regions—did not prevent Obama fromdeclaring recently that “America is pretty darngreat right now."

"The shrinking of the American middle class is a pervasive phenomenon," said Rakesh Kochhar, associate research director for Pew and the lead author of the report. "It has increased the polarization in incomes."

"Emmanuel Saez, a professor of economics

at the University of California, Berkeley,

estimates that the top 1 percent of American

households now controls 42 percent of the

nation’s wealth, up from less than 30 percent

two decades ago. The top 0.1 percent

accounts for 22 percent, nearly double the

1995 proportion."

THE BANKSTER-FUNDED DEMOCRAT PARTY IS HELL

BENT ON WIDER OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY AND NO

LEGAL NEED APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND

PROFITS HIGH FOR THEIR CORPORATE PAYMASTERS

Chicago's homeless speak on poverty, inequality and budget cuts

By Jeff Lusanne 31 May 2016

Across the state of Illinois, homelessness is on the rise under the impact of the financial crisis and major budget cuts to critical social programs in the state.

"The slump in major chain store sales reflects the impact of a vastreordering of class relations in the US, accelerated in the aftermathof the 2008 financial crisis, that has benefited the rich and thesuper-rich and devastated large sections of the working population.The policies of the Obama administration, Congress and theFederal Reserve—flooding the financial markets with virtually free cash while imposing brutal cuts in social programs andwages—have facilitated a further growth of financial parasitismand speculation."

"Corporate profits and CEO pay have soared not on the basis ofproductive investment, but rather through new forms of financialgambling and the inflation of stock prices. The result is a furthergrowth of social inequality and a deepening of the crisis of the realeconomy."

US department store sales plunge, jobless claims rise

By Barry Grey17 May 2016

Major US department store chains reported a further fall in salesand profits last week, reflecting the growth of recessionary trendsin the real economy and the impact of declining living standards forbroad sections of the US population.

Macy’s, Kohl’s, JCPenney and Dillards, all of which depend largely on mid- and lower-income customers for the bulk of their revenues, reported sharply lower figures for the first quarter of 2016 and did worse than analysts had predicted. Nordstrom, which targets a more affluent clientele, also reported poor results.

The dismal results sparked a sell-off of the firms’ stocks. They followed a wave of store closings and mass layoffs in recent weeks by Macy’s, the country’s largest department store chain, and discount retailers Walmart and Sears/Kmart.

Macy’s, which announced 41 store closings and thousands of job cuts in January, reported its worst quarterly sales since the recession that followed the 2008 Wall Street crash. It was its fifth straight quarterly sales decline and sparked the firm’s biggest one-day stock price loss since 2008.

The company cut its sales forecast for the year to a decline of between 3 and 4 percent from an earlier estimate of a 1 percent drop and announced it would intensify its cost-cutting.

The clothing chain Gap said it was considering closing more stores after its sales continued to drop and Fitch Ratings cut its credit to junk bond status.

While the Commerce Department reported Friday that overall retail sales rose 1.3 percent in April, the biggest monthly increase in a year, the gain was driven mainly by sales of autos and gasoline, along with a boost in online shopping. Mall traffic has continued to slump as most consumers face an increasingly difficult struggle to make ends meet.

The slump in major chain store sales reflects the impact of a vast reordering of class relations in the US, accelerated in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, that has benefited the rich and the super-rich and devastated large sections of the working population. The policies of the Obama administration, Congress and the Federal Reserve—flooding the financial markets with virtually free cash while imposing brutal cuts in social programs and wages—have facilitated a further growth of financial parasitism and speculation.Corporate profits and CEO pay have soared not on the basis of productive investment, but rather through new forms of financial gambling and the inflation of stock prices. The result is a further growth of social inequality and a deepening of the crisis of the real economy.

As Harvard economist and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is quoted as saying in the current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, “The United States right now has the lowest infrastructure investment rate that it has had since the Second World War.” The further decay of American capitalism and the country’s social infrastructure is reflected in the fact that American workers’ productivity is rising at the slowest five-year rate since 1982.

Global recessionary trends are finding expression in slowing job creation and an accelerating pace of layoffs in the US. Last week, the Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims in the week ending May 7 shot up by 20,000 from the previous week, hitting 294,000, the highest level in more than a year.

The employment report for April recorded the smallest increase in US payrolls in seven months and an actual decline in the labor market. This followed the dismal report on US economic growth for the first quarter of this year, which showed an increase in the gross domestic product of a mere 0.5 percent, the slowest pace in two years.

In the first four months of 2016, US employers announced more than 250,000 job cuts, the highest January-April total since the depths of the economic crisis in 2009.

These indices, along with a raft of reportsexposing different aspects of the acute socialcrisis gripping the country—declining lifeexpectancy and rising mortality rates, recordrates of suicide and drug addiction, sinkinghousehold incomes for the vast majority ofurban regions—did not prevent Obama fromdeclaring recently that “America is pretty darngreat right now.”

By Kate Randall 14 May 2016

A new study from the Pew Research Center shows that more than four-fifths of US metropolitan areas have seen household incomes decline in the new century. The research is based on data from urban centers that are home to three-quarters of the US population.

The study analyzed data from 229 of the 381 metropolitan areas in the US, as defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). These areas accounted for 76 percent of the US population in 2014, those that could be identified in US Census Bureau data with statistics available for both 2000 and 2014.

Middle-income households are defined as those with incomes of about $42,000 to $125,000, adjusted for a household of three. Pew found that the share of middle-income households fell in 203 of 299 metropolitan areas from 2000 to 2014. With household income falling in the middle-income tier in these areas, the share of upper- and lower-income tiers have correspondingly grown.

Based on US Census figures, the share of middle-income adults also fell nationwide, while the shares in the lower- and upper-income tiers have increased. The national share of American adults decreased, from 55 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in 2014. At the other poles of society, the share of adults in the upper-income tier increased from 17 percent to 20 percent, and the share of adults in the lower-income tier increased from 28 percent to 29 percent.

US metropolitan areas with the lowest household incomes are mainly located in the South. Areas with the highest household incomes are concentrated along the Northeast corridor and mid-Atlantic, from Boston to the District of Columbia, and in Northern California, representing the proliferation and profits of the tech, insurance and finance industries, as well as high-paid government employees and politicians.

Midland, Texas, which benefited from the rise in oil prices from 2000 to 2014, saw both a shrinking middle class, which fell from 53 percent to 43 percent, as well as a decline in lower income households, falling from 28 percent to 21 percent. The recent drop in oil prices is not reflected in these figures.

In nearly half of the metropolitan areas studied, the lower-income share of households increased. The 10 metropolitan areas with the greatest losses in overall economic status—the change in the share of upper-income adults minus the change in the share who were lower-income—have one thing in common: a greater than average reliance on manufacturing.

These include the Rust Belt areas of Springfield, Ohio, and Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, Michigan, as well as two North Carolina areas: Rocky Mount and Hickory-Lenoir-Morgantown.

In Springfield, which saw the biggest decline in economic status, a 16 percent drop, the truck assembly plant owned by Navistar employs thousands fewer workers than it did in its heyday.

The Detroit metropolitan area has seen a dramatic decline in auto jobs, as well as a drastic drop in wages through two-tier systems introduced in large part as a result of the Obama administration’s auto bailout with the collaboration of the United Autoworkers Union.

The Hickory-Lenoir-Morgantown area, once a thriving center of furniture manufacturing, has seen the demise of this industry, with an accompanying decline in household incomes and an increase in poverty.

The study shows that wages in manufacturing are falling to the levels of those in the fast-food industry and at big-box retailers. In 2013, the typical manufacturing production worker made 7.7 percent below the median wage for all occupations. The median wage of these production workers was $15.66, with a quarter making $11.91 or less.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) also found that since 1989 there has been a significant increase in the hiring of frontline production workers through temporary staffing agencies. Frontline workers are defined as non-supervisorial production workers who work at least 27 hours per week in the manufacturing industry or those highly associated with it.

The Berkeley study found that high utilization of government programs by manufacturing workers was primarily due to low wages as opposed to inadequate work hours. Economic Policy Institute researchers found that as manufacturing wages have declined, manufacturing labor productivity grew by an average of 3.3 percent a year from 1997 to 2012, nearly one-third greater than in the private, nonfarm economy as a whole.

This means that the manufacturing industry is sucking more and more productivity out of workers, while catapulting them out of the “middle class” and into poverty through low wages.

There has been a dramatic growth in low-paying temporary positions, which now account for 9 percent of frontline manufacturing jobs—a nine-fold increase from 25 years ago. Temporary workers earn a median wage of $10.88 an hour, compared to $15.03 for those hired directly by manufacturers.

Nearly half of all manufacturing workers hired through staffing agencies are enrolled in at least one public assistance program, just below the 52 percent of fast-food workers who rely on these programs.

Ken Jacobs, chair of the Labor Center and co-author of the report, told Berkeley News, “Manufacturing has long been thought of as providing high-paying, middle-class work, but the reality is the production jobs are increasingly coming to resemble fast-food or Walmart jobs, especially for those workers employed through temporary staffing agencies.”

THESE ARE THE REQUIREMENTS TO ESTABLISH A DICTATORSHIP."Under the Obama administration, the Democrats have spearheaded the attack on wages and benefits for higher paid workers as part of an overall transfer of wealth to the financial elite."“I am ignorant to politics in the United States,” said Oscar, who indicated that he was originally from Mexico. “But I see this country heading in the direction of revolution; there was a Civil War in this country once before, the question becomes how do we convince young people and workers that a revolution is the way forward?”

Obama’s labor board intervenes on behalf of Verizon strikebreakers

By Samuel Davidson12 May 2016

A federal district court judge has issued an order barring striking Verizon workers from picketing New York City hotels housing strikebreakers hired by the company. The court acted in response to a petition by the Obama administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which claimed the picketing violated the ban on secondary boycotts under provisions of the National Labor Relations Act.

The action follows the injury of a Verizon striker outside a New York hotel housing scab replacement workers. On Monday, a van carrying scabs from a hotel and being driven by a New York City police officer stuck and injured James Smith, a member of CWA Local 1109, who was reportedly sent to the hospital. Strikers said that the driver of the van was a police lieutenant from the 108th precinct of Long Island City.

The NLRB’s general counsel has issued a complaint against the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and scheduled a hearing for June 9.

Meanwhile, no charges have been filed against the cop who injured the striking worker, and the CWA has not issued a statement on the incident.

The injunction underscores the bankruptcy of the strategy of pressuring the Democratic Party. The actions of the NLRB supplement the strikebreaking role of New York City Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio, who has penned picketers behind barricades while mobilizing scores of cops to escort strikebreakers across their picket lines.

Verizon Communications has stepped up its strikebreaking efforts against the 39,000 workers who have been off the job since April 13 against massive concession demands. It has increased the hiring of scabs to supplement the 20,000 management personnel along with contractors that have been trained to fill the jobs of the striking workers. Many managers were also transferred into the region from Verizon areas not affected by the strike. In addition, the company claims that about 1,000 striking workers have returned to work.

Other confrontations throughout the region are being reported. Verizon has apparently instructed its scabs to confront and try and provoke picketers. In Cambria County, Pennsylvania, police were called to investigate a fire affecting some Verizon equipment, which the company claims was set by strikers. During the 2011 strike, the company made hundreds of phony charges to blame strikers for the breakdown of their equipment.

The stepped-up strikebreaking by Verizon with the backing of the Obama administration follows the decision on May 1 by Verizon to terminate health insurance and life insurance coverage for the 39,000 workers and their families.

Verizon is demanding deep cuts to health care for both active and retired workers. In addition, Verizon is demanding changes to work rules that would lead to thousands of jobs being destroyed. Under Verizon’s proposal, workers could be forced to transfer up to 100 miles from their current work location. In addition, workers could be forced to work anywhere in the region for up to 60 days a year. Verizon is also seeking to close 11 of its call centers, consolidating them into mega-centers as well as having an even greater share of calls handled by non-union workers. In what the company termed its “last, best and final offer,” the company did not back away from any of its demands.

In the face of this assault, the CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are working to isolate the strikers and impose the vast concessions. The CWA and the IBEW kept the workers on the job for eight months, giving Verizon time to fix troubles and train its workforce before calling the strike. The IBEW, meanwhile, has told its members to go look for other jobs.
The CWA hinted in a conference call on Monday that it would order strikers back to work, even without a contract as they did in 2011, if only Verizon would give them something that they could sell to their members.

The CWA and the IBEW do not represent workers; rather, they represent a highly paid parasitic bureaucracy, which is seeking to secure its position as a second layer of management for the company.

The World Socialist Web Site, which is calling upon workers to form rank-and-file committees to take the organization and leadership of the struggle out of the hands of the union officialdom, has been receiving wide support among strikers, many of whom have signed up for the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter and are reading our site daily.

WSWS reporters have spoken with workers throughout the region.

Metro Washington DCNumerous workers at a picket line in northern Virginia expressed their appreciation to the WSWS for its continued coverage of the strike; many also indicated that they have been following the web site.
“We haven’t heard anything about this, no one except for you guys have reported it,” said one worker, speaking of the New York City Police Department violence toward the strikers. Workers expressed dissatisfaction with the trade union and the two-party political system to reporters from the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter, with a common refrain being that the CWA and the Democratic and Republican parties were “in bed together.”

“I am ignorant to politics in the United States,” said Oscar, who indicated that he was originally from Mexico. “But I see this country heading in the direction of revolution; there was a Civil War in this country once before, the question becomes how do we convince young people and workers that a revolution is the way forward?”

Replying to this question, a reporter from the WSWS indicated that the act of social revolution was undertaken when the current social order was deemed to be intolerable to masses of people—forcing them to forge a new path forward as a social class. It was explained that a revolutionary outbreak was inevitable in America as well as internationally, and that it was the job of working people to educate themselves on the lessons of the 20th century to prepare for the struggles ahead.

Joseph, a worker with more than 10 years at Verizon, interjected, stating that younger people in America not only had it worse than their parent’s generation, but “they have it worse than people their age had it just five years ago.” Joseph spoke about his time living in Ohio recently: “There were only two places in town you could get a job where I was—Cooper Tire and Lexis Nexus. There were scores of young people with no jobs— underage parents, you name it. A lot of young women try to have children with older men because there’s really no jobs available to anyone younger than 30.”

Speaking about the New York City Police Department’s efforts to aid strikebreakers, Joseph said, “It goes back to the 2001 Patriot Act; you can’t even form a union today because if more than nine guys congregate out here, it can be considered a ‘subversive activity.’” When WSWS reporters pointed out the relationship to the state’s repression of peaceful protests and the attempts to break their strike, Joseph said, “I think we’ve had far too many freedoms taken from us in the name of ‘freedom.’ It’s funny because most of the things that harm us are usually (falsely) named things; for instance, the Democratic Party isn’t really democratic, and the Republican Party isn’t really republican.”

When asked by the WSWS about union reports about numerous striking workers in Virginia crossing the picket lines to go back to work, Joseph stated that the strike fund at the national level was only giving workers several hundred dollars a week to remain out. “The union is a multibillion-dollar non-profit corporation itself,” he said, noting that it was looking out for its own bottom line.

Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaBoth Michele and Pamela work in the repair call center, taking calls from customers, fixing their troubles when they can, and dispatching technicians when needed.

“We’re Bell babies,” said Michele. “Both our parents worked for Verizon. My mother retired 16 years ago after working 42 years for the company. They have doubled her co-pays, and now they want to make her pay for her benefits.

“It is not just us, but we are fighting for all the people who built this company. Every three years, the company is trying to take more and more away from us. You work all that time, with the expectation that you will get a pension and health care, and now they are saying they could take it away at any time.

“I’m not old enough to retire, and I have a 16- and a 19-year-old. One’s in college and the other’s in high school.”

Pamela agreed. “My parents worked all these years to make this company, and all they care about is making more money.”

Describing the working conditions, Pamela said, “they make it impossible to get a satisfactory rating. We have to finish each call within four minutes, but sometimes the customers are very angry and it takes time to calm down and work on their problem. Then the customer gets a survey, and if we don’t score a 5, we get 0 points toward our review.

“The company also records every call. You have to end every call by asking the customer if they received five-star service. If you forget to ask, you get a bad rating. If management doesn’t like you, they can look through the calls to find stuff against you.”

Boston, MassachusettsVerizon strikers in the Boston area, members of the IBEW, held a noon-time rally Wednesday, calling on workers from across Greater Boston to support the strike. Fast food workers, nurses, school bus drivers and other workers came out to support the strikers.

Speakers addressing the rally included union bureaucrats, local Democratic Party politicians and a sheriff. The various speakers denounced Filipino and Mexican workers for stealing Verizon workers’ jobs and blamed union members for not fighting hard enough.

No mention was made of the strikebreaking operation in New York or the worker who was struck by a van carrying scabs in Queens.

One worker told the WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter that similar striking-breaking operations were underway in Nashua, New Hampshire, and possibly other New England locations.

“We went up to Nashua one morning and confronted them there,” he said. “The police blocked off every street in the neighborhood to let all of them leave.” He said the scab contractors were housed in a motel, and no one knew where they were headed, and the police didn’t let anyone follow them.

Another worker said the current union strategy was to go after Verizon’s retail stores, and they received a lot of public support when they mentioned wages and benefits and the profits of the company.

“This is happening everywhere in the country,” he said. “You’ve got the one-percenters, and they want it all. It’s just corporate greed. It’s been going on for years, the separation of the classes.”

Middle Class in Major U.S. Cities is Shrinking, Pew Study Says

"The shrinking of the American middle class is a pervasive phenomenon," said Rakesh Kochhar, associate research director for Pew and the lead author of the report. "It has increased the polarization in incomes."

byAssociated Press

BLOG: HOW MANY AMERICAN CITIES ARE NOW OCCUPIEDBY MEXICO? CITIES WHERE THE JOBS GO FIRST TOILLEGALS, AND THAT COUNTY PAYS OUT MILLIONS INWELFARE TO MEXICO'S ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS?In cities across America, the middle class is hollowing out.

A widening wealth gap is moving more households into either higher- or lower-income groups in major metro areas, with fewer remaining in the middle, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

In nearly one-quarter of metro areas, middle-class adults no longer make up a majority, the Pew analysis found. That's up from fewer than 10 percent of metro areas in 2000.

Pew defines the middle class as households with incomes between two-thirds of median income and twice the median, adjusted for household size and the local cost of living. The median is midway between richest and poorest. By Pew's definition, a three-person household was middle class in 2014 if its annual income fell between $42,000 and $125,000.

Middle class adults now make up less than half the population in such cities as New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Houston.

That sharp shift reflects a broader erosion that occurred from 2000 through 2014. Over that time, the middle class shrank in nine out of every 10 metro areas, Pew found.

"The shrinking of the American middle class is a pervasive phenomenon," said Rakesh Kochhar, associate research director for Pew and the lead author of the report. "It has increased the polarization in incomes."

The squeezing of the middle class has animated this year's presidential campaign, lifting the insurgent candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Many experts warn that widening income inequality may slow economic growth and make social mobility more difficult. Academic research has found that compared with children in more economically mixed communities, children raised in predominantly lower-income neighborhoods are less likely to move into the middle class.

Nationally, the proportion of middle class adults shrank to 51 percent in 2014 from 55 percent in 2000, Pew found. Upper-income adults now constitute 20 percent of the population, up from 17 percent. The lower-income share has risen to 29 percent from 28 percent.

Yet the changes have been much more dramatic at the local level. There are now 79 metro areas in which the proportion of adults in upper-income households equals or exceeds the national average of 20 percent. That's more than double the 37 cities in which that was true in 2000.

The report studied 229 of the largest U.S. metro areas, which constituted 76 percent of the U.S. population.

Amnesty..... it's all about keeping wagesDEPRSSED!UNDER BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA, TWO-THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGAL.

Poverty has become more concentrated under Obama

By Nancy Hanover2 May 2016

Under the Obama administration, more Americans have found themselves consigned to economic ghettos, living in neighborhoods where more than 40 percent subsist below the poverty level. Millions more now live in “high poverty” districts of 20-40 percent poverty, according to recently released report by the Brookings Institution.

All in all, more than half of the nation’s poor are now concentrated in these high-poverty neighborhoods. This means that on top of the difficult daily struggle to make ends meet, they face a raft of additional crushing barriers because of where they live.

The Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program report, “Concentrated poverty continues to grow post recession,” is authored by Elizabeth Kneebone and Natalie Holmes and scrutinizes this unprecedented shift in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown.

The report, based on an analysis of US census tracts, shows that concentrations of poverty have grown under the Obama administration in all geography types: large metropolitan areas, small cities and rural areas. In fact, the number of poor people living in concentrated poverty in suburbs grew nearly twice as fast as in cities, putting paid to the myth of affluence or even stability in America’s suburbs.

The growth of social and economic distress within large parts of the US is demonstrated by the statistics. Pockets of high poverty exist in virtually every part of the country, including adjacent to the nation’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Since 2000, according to the report, the total number of poor people living in high-poverty neighborhoods has doubled to 14 million Americans. This is five million more than prior to the Great Recession.

Referring to the “double burden” facing the poor when they live in high-poverty neighborhoods, Kneebone and Holmes say, “Residents of poor neighborhoods face higher crime rates and exhibit poorer physical and mental health outcomes. They tend to go to poor-performing neighborhood schools with higher dropout rates. Their job-seeking networks tend to be weaker and they face higher levels of financial insecurity.”

These effects are clearly discernible once a neighborhood’s poverty rate exceeds 20 percent, the report explains. During the study period, between 2005-09 and 2010-14, the number of such high poverty neighborhoods grew by more than 4,300.

Across many demographics: City and suburb, black and white

Suburbs accounted for one-third of the newly high-poverty neighborhoods, a higher share than cities, rural or small metro areas. The share of poor black and Hispanic suburban residents climbed by 10 percent while poor white residents climbed by eight percent, almost as much.

BLOG: OBAMANOMICS; FUCK THE WORKER TO SERVE THE SUPER RICH

The palpable effects of the auto industry restructuring, with the Obama administration’s stipulation of a 50 percent cut in wages for new autoworkers, is demonstrated in the growth of poverty in the sprawling auto-dominated Detroit region. Out of metro Detroiters living in poverty, 58 percent now reside in suburban districts, according to a survey by Oakland County Lighthouse.

A recent and similar demographic study by the Century Foundation states that the six-county region has the highest concentration of poverty among the top 25 metro areas in the US by population. This represents 32 percent of the poor living in concentrated tracts.

There has been a staggering growth of poor neighborhoods in and around Detroit, Kneebone told the Detroit Free Press, adding that the number “grew almost fivefold between 2000 and 2010-14.” Detroit now has an official poverty rate of 39 percent, the highest in the US among cities with more than 300,000 residents.

“Sadly this report reinforces what we have been seeing year after year in Detroit and across Michigan.” Gilda Jacobs, of the Michigan League for Public Policy told the World Socialist Web Site. “Poverty is too high, and where people—especially kids—live has a direct and significant impact on their economic standing, health and other outcomes.”

From the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt

Detroit, however, is just the most concentrated expression of the national trend. “Among the nation’s largest metro areas, two-thirds (67 percent) saw concentrated poverty grow between 2005-09 and 2010-14,” the Brookings study found. The authors note that some of the “largest upticks included a number of Sun Belt metro areas hit hard by the collapse of the housing market—like Fresno, Bakersfield and Stockton in California and Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona—and older industrial areas in the Midwest and northeast—like Indianapolis, Buffalo, and Syracuse.”
Eight metro areas now show concentrated poverty over 30 percent: Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wisconsin (30.1 percent); Memphis, Tennessee (31.1 percent); Bakersfield, California (31.7 percent); Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, Michigan (32 percent); Syracuse, New York (32.4 percent); Toledo, Ohio (34.9 percent); Fresno, California (43.8 percent); and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas (52.3 percent).

As the WSWS has previously reported, all job growth over the last decade has been “temp” or contingency employment, traditionally the lowest wage levels of any job and paying no benefits. This loss of hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs has impacted communities throughout the US. Concentrated poverty in suburbs has jumped 2.4 points in the wake of the recession, to a record high of 7.1 percent.

What is the “double burden” of concentrated poverty?

In her remarks to the WSWS, Gilda Jacobs elaborated on the double burden of concentrated poverty: “So many detrimental factors come with living in high-poverty neighborhoods. There are no viable jobs, public transportation, childcare, or grocery stores. Crime rates are high, there’s blight and abandoned buildings, and the health risks of lead exposure and asthma. Even Detroit’s public schools are unhealthy and even dangerous.

“This is what Detroit kids and other low-income children are dealing with every day, and what they have to try to overcome in improving their futures. These living and learning conditions are all connected, and harm kids’ development and learning, their academic outcomes and their future job prospects. It is called toxic stress when kids are under constant strain. This study reiterates that so many factors affecting poverty are external and environmental, making them nearly impossible to defeat alone,” she stressed.

A series of studies [including George Galster’s “The Mechanism(s) of Neighborhood Effects Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications” and others] have documented how poor neighborhoods undermine even the most determined individual efforts to escape poverty.

Taken together, these studies demonstrate how the escalating growth of poverty concentration exacts an ever-higher toll on American society, affecting many aspects of life and particularly destroying the potential of the next generation.

OBAMA'S BANKSTER RULED AMERICA - THE LOOTING NEVER ENDS!

*Education. High-poverty neighborhoods exert “downward pressure” on school quality. Data from the Stanford Data Archive has recently shown a staggering effect upon child learning capacities of attending impoverished school districts. Utilizing 215 million state accountability test scores, the study showed that “Children in districts with the highest concentrations of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts [emphasis added].”

*Violence. Exposure to violence has reached epidemic proportions for low-income youth, particularly among minorities. Parental stress over neighborhood violence is a substantial factor motivating families to move—when they can—from high-poverty neighborhoods, compounded by fears of negative peer influences upon their children. Youth and adults who have been exposed to violence as witnesses or victims suffer increased stress and documented declines in mental health.

*Toxic exposures. Poor areas are chronically associated with higher concentrations of air-, water- and soil-borne pollutants. Lead poisoning is most often associated with older housing stock.
Researchers have demonstrated that depression, asthma, diabetes and heart ailments are correlated with living in high-poverty neighborhoods. Additionally, individuals in poor neighborhoods often receive inferior health care and reduced government services.

*Other effects of physical decay. The inability to exercise outdoors is a known factor in the rise of obesity, especially among children. High levels of noise pollution produce stress, and prolonged exposure to run-down surroundings can lead to hopelessness.

*The poor pay more. Prices in poor neighborhoods are notoriously higher and the goods of poorer quality than those in better-off areas. Food and health-care “deserts” are common. The costs of home and car insurance are usually substantially higher.

*Lack of social cohesion. Disorder and lack of social cohesion are associated with both crime and mental distress. Children who live without a cohesive neighborhood network are more likely to have behavioral problems and have lower verbal skills. Those in areas of concentrated poverty are typically more isolated within their households and have fewer educated or employed friends and neighbors. Low levels of employment in distressed neighborhoods also destroy the informal networks crucial for workers to find good jobs.

THE LA RAZA MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY PARTNER TO SURRENDER OUR BORDERS TO NARCOMEX.

"This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration andcreated an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who arefed up with the status quo. These are real people, their anger ispalpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon."

Independent news at its best. If it's blacked-out, covered-up or censored, you can find it here!

March 23, 2016

Statistic of the Week:The amount of assets/wealth the average adult has in each country:

Belgium - $150,348

UK - $126,472

Norway - $119,634

Japan - $96,071

France - $86,156

Canada - $74,750

Netherlands - $74,659

USA - $49,787

-from Credit Suisse via Institute for Policy Studies

BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA ORCHESTRATED

THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF AMERICA'S ECONOMY

TO THE RICH SINCE BILL CLINTON.

"Emmanuel Saez, a professor of economicsat the University of California, Berkeley,estimates that the top 1 percent of Americanhouseholds now controls 42 percent of thenation’s wealth, up from less than 30 percenttwo decades ago. The top 0.1 percentaccounts for 22 percent, nearly double the

1995 proportion."

DURING THE EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA'S "HOPE AND

NO CHANGE", TWO -THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO

FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGALS AND ILLEGALS.

THE MILLIONS OF AMERICAN THAT SUNK INTO

POVERTY HAS SOARED, JUST AS THE CRIMES AND

PROFITS OF OBAMA - CLINTON CRONIES ON WALL

STREET!

"To this, we say: we hear you.The system is corrupt. The economy is rigged.

Big campaign contributors do pull the strings in Washington. Working people are right to be angry about trade policy and the betrayal of the middle class, working families, and the poor by an elite establishment that profits from the status quo."

Sharp rise in US suicide rate

Eighty percent increase among middle-

aged white women

By Kate Randall23 April 2016

The suicide rate in the United States has increased sharply since the beginning of the current century, according to federal data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The increase is led by a particularly sharp rise in suicide among middle-aged white people, especially women.

The study by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics

follows recent reports documenting a decline in life

expectancy among whites and sharp increases in lifespan

divergences between rich and poor in America.

As with life expectancy, the incidence of suicide is a key barometer of the health of a society. The rise in the rate at which people choose to take their own lives is yet another indication of the social crisis gripping America.

The new data shows that the age-adjusted suicide rate in the US jumped 24 percent between 1999 and 2014, from 10.5 per 100,000 people to 13 per 100,000 people. The figures show a 1.0 percent annual increase in suicide between 1999 and 2006 and a 2 percent yearly rise from 2007 to 2014. In total, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014 compared to 29,199 in 1999.

The accelerated rise in the suicide rate from 2007 to 2014 coincides with the Great Recession and its aftermath and demonstrates the tragic impact of economic distress on significant layers of the population. Other contributing factors cited by the study’s authors include rising drug addiction and overdoses, growing divorce rates among older Americans, increased social isolation and a health care system ill-equipped to deal with mental health issues and suicide prevention.

Over the period of the study, the suicide rate for women aged 45-64 jumped by 63 percent and by 43 percent for men in the same age range. White middle-aged women had a shocking 80 percent increase in suicide during this period, three to four times higher than for females in other racial and ethnic groups.

Suicide rates for non-Hispanic black females rose by 0.8 percent among women 45-64; the rate for Hispanic women in this age group rose by 0.7 percent. Non-Hispanic black males were the only racial and ethnic group of either sex to have a lower suicide rate in 2014 than in 1999, declining by 8 percent.

The suicide rate in the American Indian and Alaska Native population surged from 1999 to 2014, rising by 90 percent for women and 38 percent for men. Among this group, 188 women and 348 men took their own lives in 2014.

Suicides among men were still more than three times the rate among women in 2014, but the study shows that the gap between the genders is closing. The higher rate among men is in part attributed to a higher suicide success rate through the use of firearms, fatal jumps and other methods.

Although based on a small number of suicides when compared to other age groups (150 in 2014), the suicide rate for females aged 10-14 had the largest percentage increase, tripling from 0.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 1.5 per 100,000 in 2014. The suicide rate increased for women in all age groups except those 75 and above, where it declined by 11 percent.

Suicide rates for males were also higher in 2014 than in 1999 for all age groups under 75 years. However, despite an 8 percent decline for men 75 and older, this age group saw the highest rate of suicide in 2014, with 38.8 per 100,000, or 3,106 male seniors, taking their own lives.

The data shows that from 1999 to 2014, the percentages of suicides involving firearms and poisoning declined, while those involving suffocation increased. For both males and females, about one in four suicides in 2014 was attributable to suffocation, which includes hanging, self-strangulation and other methods of asphyxia. Experts note that such suicides are difficult to prevent as almost all people have the means to carry them out.

Poisoning was the most common method of suicide for women in 2014, making up about one-third of all female suicides. Poisoning agents include prescription opioids, heroin and other toxic substances. While accidental overdoses from opioids have skyrocketed in recent years, purposeful fatal overdoses have also increased.

The most frequent “other” suicide methods for females in 2014 were falls (2.8 percent) and drowning (1.4 percent). For males, “other” methods included falls (2.2 percent) and cutting or piercing (1.9 percent).

According to the CDC data, 33,113 people committed suicide in 2014. Suicide is one of the 10 leading causes of death for Americans. While death rates for major killers such as some cancers and heart disease have seen a long-term decline in recent decades, the suicide rate is rising precipitously.

Psychiatric conditions--including depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia--as well as other chronic medical problems undeniably play a role in suicide. The lack of access to high quality, affordable medical care leads to isolation and marginalization for increasing numbers of those in need of counseling and treatment.

The intersection of these very real medical and mental health issues with the economic devastation faced by millions in 21st century America is pushing increasing numbers of people over the brink. While the Obama administration declared economic “recovery” from the recession in mid-2009, the reality is starkly different for the vast majority of Americans today.

The new CDC study does not break down the incidence of suicide by income level, but its victims are undoubtedly predominantly poor, working class and lower middle class, similar to those in recent studies on US life expectancy.

America is a society in which growing numbers of people survive on low-wage, part-time, temporary and contingent jobs, often holding down two or more jobs to make ends meet. Working families are burdened by soaring medical costs and rising mortgage or rent payments. Many college graduates are saddled with debt and unable to find secure and decent-paying work. Veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Retirees are unable to survive on paltry Social Security benefits. Millions have been driven out of the labor market and subsist at the margins of society.

This reality does not enter into the current presidential campaign debate. While “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders rails against the “billionaire class,” the main aim of his campaign is to divert growing anti-capitalist sentiment among workers and young people back into the confines of the Democratic Party.

A longtime ally of the Democrats and

defender of capitalism, he has pledged to

support the Democratic frontrunner, former

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a

personification of militarism and corruption,

should she secure the nomination.

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump, the likely Republican candidate, promotes a fascistic and anti-working class agenda, scapegoating immigrants and Muslims. None of the candidates of the political establishment have answers to the economic and social crisis and the personal toll it takes on working people and youth.

US corporate tax cheats hiding $1.4 trillion

in profits in offshore accounts

By Patrick Martin15 April 2016

A report issued Thursday by the British charity Oxfam found that the 50 largest US corporations are hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in overseas accounts to avoid US income taxes, much of it in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

The biggest tax dodger is technology giant

Apple, with $181 billion held offshore. General

Electric had the second-largest stash, at $119

billion, enough to repay four times over the

$28 billion GE received in federal guarantees

during the 2008 Wall Street crash. Microsoft

had $108 billion in overseas accounts, with

companies like Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, IBM,

Cisco Systems, Google, Merck, and Johnson

& Johnson rounding out the top ten.

Overseas tax havens have been the focus of recent revelations about tax scams by wealthy individuals, based on the leak of the “Panama Papers,” documents from a single Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, involving 214,000 offshore shell companies. The firm’s clients included 29 billionaires and 140 top politicians worldwide, among them a dozen heads of government.

But the sums involved in corporate tax scams dwarf those hidden away by individuals. According to the Oxfam report, the offshore manipulations by the 50 largest US corporations cost the US taxpayer $111 billion each year, while robbing another $100 billion annually from countries overseas, many of them desperately poor.

The $111 billion a year in US taxes evaded would be sufficient to eliminate 90 percent of child poverty in America, effectively wiping out that social scourge. It is more than the annual cost of the food stamp program, or unemployment benefits, or the total budget of the Department of Education.

Oxfam timed the release of its report for the April 15 income tax deadline in the United States (actually Monday, April 18 this year), when tens of millions of working people must file their income tax returns or face federal penalties. Working people could face additional tax penalties of up to 2 percent of household income, to a maximum of $975, under the Obamacare “individual mandate,” if they have not purchased private health insurance.

There is a stark contrast between the IRS hounding of working people for relatively small amounts of money—but difficult or impossible to pay for those on low incomes—and the green light given to corporate tax cheats who evade taxation on trillions in income.

“As Americans rush to finalize tax returns, multinational corporations that benefit from trillions in taxpayer-funded support are dodging billions in taxes,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “The vast sums large companies stash in tax havens should be fighting poverty and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, not hidden offshore in Panama, Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands.”

The Oxfam report, titled “Broken at the Top,” expresses concern that “tax dodging by multinational corporations…contributes to dangerous inequality that is undermining our social fabric and hindering economic growth.”

It continues: “This inequality is fueled by an economic and political system that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest, causing the gains of economic growth over the last several decades to go disproportionately to the already wealthy. Among the most damning examples of this rigged system is the way large, profitable companies use offshore tax havens, and other aggressive and secretive methods, to dramatically lower their corporate tax rates in the United States and developing countries alike.”

Oxfam collected figures available from the 10-K reports and other financial documents issued by the 50 largest US companies, covering the period since the Wall Street crash, 2008 through 2014, and presented them in an interactive table. The figures included total profits, federal taxes paid, total US taxes paid (including state and local), lobbying expenses, tax breaks, money held in offshore accounts, and benefits received from the federal government, including loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.

Among the most important findings:

* The top 50 companies made nearly $4

trillion in profits globally, but paid only $412

billion in federal income tax, for an effective

tax rate of barely 10 percent, compared to the

statutory rate of 35 percent.

* The 50 companies spent $2.6 billion to

influence the federal government, while

reaping nearly $11.2 trillion in federal support,

for an effective return of 400,000 percent on

their lobbying expenses.

* The overseas cash stashed by the 50

companies, nearly $1.4 trillion, is larger than

the Gross Domestic Product of Russia,

Mexico, Spain or South Korea.

* US multinationals reported 43 percent of

their foreign earnings from five tax havens,

countries that accounted for only 4 percent of

their foreign workforce and 7 percent of

foreign investment. All told, US companies

shifted between $500 billion and $700 billion

n in profits from countries where economic

activity actually took place to countries where

tax rates were low.

* In the year 2012 alone, US firms reported

$80 billion in profits in Bermuda, more than

their combined reported profits in the four

largest economies (after the US itself): China,

Japan, Germany and France. This figure was

nearly 20 times the total GDP of the tiny

island country.

The Oxfam report also pointed to an estimated $100 billion in taxes evaded in foreign countries, many of them rich in natural resources extracted by such global giants as Exxon, Chevron and Dow Chemical. According to the report, “Taxes paid, or unpaid, by multinational companies in poor countries can be the difference between life and death, poverty or opportunity. $100 billion is four times what the 47 least developed countries in the world spend on education for their 932 million citizens. $100 billion is equivalent to what it would cost to provide basic life-saving health services or safe water and sanitation to more than 2.2 billion people.”

The report cited former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s assessment that “Africa loses more money each year to tax dodging than it receives in international development assistance.”

Oxfam offered no solution to the growth of inequality and the systematic looting by big corporations that its report documents, except to urge governments around the world to close tax loopholes. The group also pleads with the corporate bosses themselves not to be quite so greedy. Neither capitalist governments nor the CEOs will pay the slightest attention. But the working class should take note of these figures, which provide ample evidence of the bankrupt and reactionary nature of capitalism, and the urgent necessity of building a mass movement, on a global scale, to put an end to the profit system.

DURING THE EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA'S "HOPE AND NO CHANGE", TWO -THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGALS AND ILLEGALS.THE MILLIONS OF AMERICAN THAT SUNK INTO POVERTY HAS SOARED, JUST AS THE CRIMES AND PROFITS OF OBAMA - CLINTON CRONIES ON WALL STREET!

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: Serve the Rich, Obama's Crony

Banksters, and the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA to

keep wages depressed and corporate profits even greater!

CAN WE REALLY AFFORD ANOTHER WALL STREET-OWNED PRESIDENCY THAT CLINTON 2 WOULD ESTABLISH???

Independent news at its best. If it's blacked-out, covered-up or censored, you can find it here!

March 23, 2016

Statistic of the Week:The amount of assets/wealth the average adult has in each country:

Belgium - $150,348

UK - $126,472

Norway - $119,634

Japan - $96,071

France - $86,156

Canada - $74,750

Netherlands - $74,659

USA - $49,787

-from Credit Suisse via Institute for Policy Studies

New study says entire regions of US willremain in slump until the2020s

By Jerry White

21 March 2016

A new study by a University of California-Berkeley economist says that at current sluggish levels of job growth, entire regions of the United States, which were hit hardest by the Great Recession will not return to “normal” employment levels until the 2020s. This amounts, to “more than a ‘lost decade’ of depressed employment” for “half of the country,” wrote economist Danny Yagan.The new study is one of many showing that the fall of the official unemployment rate, touted by the Obama administration and the news media as proof of a robust economic recovery, if not a return to “full employment,” is largely based on the fact that millions of workers fell out of the labor force in the years preceding and following the 2008 financial crash.The labor-force participation rate fell to a 38-year low of 62.4 percent last fall, and only climbed up to 62.9 percent in February. According to the Economic Policy Institute, February’s official jobless rate of 4.9 percent—the lowest since the pre-recession level of 4.7 percent in November 2007—would really be 6.3 percent if the country’s “missing workers” were included. These include 2.4 million workers who have given up actively looking for work.Yagan based his findings on a detailed study of some 2 million, similarly paid workers in the retail industry in order to calculate employment patterns across different local areas and to account for occupations that might have been particularly hard hit in one region.He found that the areas hardest hit by the recession, which began in December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009, continued to have high levels of joblessness in 2014. His map of these distressed areas includes all of Florida and parts of Arizona, Nevada, California, Colorado, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Connecticut, New Hampshire and other states.While different areas of the country are often hit differently by an economic downturn, an article in the Wall Street Journal on Yagan’s study noted, these economically distressed areas generally return to normal levels of employment chiefly because workers move to find work in areas with a higher demand for labor. In the case of the “Great Recession,” however, the mass layoffs resulted in “muted migration,” according to other studies cited by the Journal, and workers simply fell out of the labor market.“Unlike the aftermath of the 1980s and 1990s recessions,” Yagan wrote, “employment in hard-hit areas remains very depressed relative to the rest of the country.” Living in areas like Phoenix, Arizona, or Las Vegas, Nevada means confronting “enduring joblessness and exacerbated inequality,” Yagan wrote. “If the latest convergence speed continues, employment differences across the United States are estimated to return to normal in the 2020s—more than a decade after the Great Recession.”The lack of decent job opportunities in large swathes of the country has created a reserve army of unemployed and underemployed workers who are competing for a shrinking number of jobs in areas that are more or less permanently distressed. Last month’s Labor Department employment report noted that the average annual unemployment rate in 36 states, plus Washington, D.C. was higher in 2015 than the average unemployment rate for those states in 2007.The majority of unemployed people in the US do not receive unemployment insurance benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project, with just over one in four jobless workers (27 percent), a record low, receiving such benefits in 2015.The details of these studies will come as no surprise for tens of millions of workers across the United States who face unprecedented levels of economic insecurity, ongoing mass layoffs, and more than a decade of stagnating or falling real wages. This has fueled the growth of enormous discontent and the initial stirrings of class struggle by American workers, which the trade unions and both big business parties have sought to channel in the direction of economic nationalism and hostility to workers in China, Mexico and other countries.In fact, US workers are being subjected to the same attacks as workers around the world. The reports on the employment situation in the US coincide with a continual massacre of jobs in the world’s steel, oil and mining industries, with 1.2 million steel and coal mining jobs targeted for destruction in China alone.Continual layoffs in the US have been driven by the plunging price of steel, petroleum, coal and other commodities, which has been generated in large measure by the fall in demand from China and other so-called emerging economies. Last week, St. Louis, Missouri-based Peabody Energy, the largest coal mining company in the world, announced it could soon file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after its share values fell 46 percent over the last six months.Peabody has already cut 20 percent of its global workforce since 2012, while spinning off large sections of its operations in order to cheat retirees out of their pensions. The company’s announcement follows bankruptcy filings by both Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources and a similar threat from coal mining giant Foresight Energy. In its press release, Peabody pointed to the collapse in the coal market, where the price per ton has fallen to $40 from $200 in 2008.The steel industry continues to wipe out jobs, with 12,000 steelworkers already laid off or facing imminent job cuts. The largest US steelmaker, US Steel, has slashed thousands of jobs in Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. The aluminum giant Alcoa is just weeks away from closing its smelter in Warrick County, Indiana, wiping out another 600 jobs. Meanwhile, the United Steelworkers (USW) union is pushing for protectionist measures against China, Brazil, Russia and other countries, even as it pushes through concession-laden contracts at US Steel, Allegheny Technologies and now ArcelorMittal.Early last year, the USW betrayed the strike by thousands of oil refinery workers, blocking any struggle against the brutal restructuring of the industry that is now underway. The plunging of oil prices triggered more than 258,000 layoffs in the global energy industry in 2015—with the number of active oil and gas rigs in the US falling 61 percent. Analysts anticipate a new round of job cuts and bankruptcies in early 2016.Texas has lost 60,000 energy-related jobs alone, or one-fifth of the workforce in that sector in the state, with North Dakota and Pennsylvania also being hard hit. The current US unemployment rate for the oil, gas and mining sector is 8.5 percent, but could top 10 percent by February, double the national jobless rate.Last month, the air conditioner maker Carrier announced it was eliminating 1,400 jobs at its Indianapolis plant and a nearby facility, and shipping production to Monterrey, Mexico where wages are approximately $6 an hour. A video shot by a worker, capturing the explosive anger at a meeting of plant workers when a manager makes the announcement, has been viewed millions of times.Far from organizing any resistance to the closure of the factory and destruction of jobs, however, the USW is collaborating with United Technologies Carrier management to carry out an orderly shutdown and the retraining of displaced workers for lower-paying jobs.The USW is hostile to any fight to unite American workers with their brothers and sisters in Mexico, who have been engaging in growing resistance to the exploitation by the transnational corporations. USW officials are telling workers to rely on the Democratic Party to implement protectionist trade measures to “save jobs” and “take our country back.” Local and regional union officials have had nothing but kind words about Donald Trump’s efforts to swindle workers with economic nationalist appeals.The unions have long used economic nationalism to undermine the class-consciousness of workers and to promote the corporatist outlook of “labor-management partnership.” In the name of making the corporations “competitive,” the USW and other unions have suppressed every struggle against plant closings, job cuts and the destruction of wages and benefits.This has coincided with the political subordination of workers to the Democratic Party, which under the Obama administration has spearheaded the attack on workers’ jobs and wages and the historic transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.USW Local 1999, which claims to represent Carrier workers, is urging them to support Democrat John Gregg for Indiana governor. A former land agent for Peabody Coal and lobbyist for Amax Coal Company, Gregg served as the honorary chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign in Indiana, and was a proponent of austerity and corporate tax cuts while Speaker of the state Legislature.

The Washington political establishment has hit the panic button. Not because they are afraid of any one individual or candidate, but because they are afraid of losing their own political power.

The Washington political establishment

has hit the panic button.

This town is filled with well intentioned people who believe they are doing the right thing, but far too many have lost their way after years in Washington. Politicians pay more attention to special interests groups and powerful lobbyists writing checks to their next campaigns than listening to the people back home who sent them here in the first place.

This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and

created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who

are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their

anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. We’ll respect your inbox and keep you informed.

A recent survey of likely Republican primary voters showed that 86 percent believe that “people like me don’t have any say about what the government does.” Another recent exit poll in my home state of Georgia showed that six in ten Republicans felt “betrayed” by their political party.

This sentiment is something I heard countless times during my campaign for the United States Senate just over a short year ago. It is what pulled me to get involved personally to try and make a difference. But this is not just happening in Georgia. People across America are angry, frustrated, and scared because they feel as though Washington is not listening to them.

A growing number of Americans are more motivated by this feeling of frustration than any individual political ideology.

A growing number of Americans are more motivated by this feeling of frustration than any individual political ideology. The rise of career politicians has completely shifted the political paradigm from just liberal versus conservative. There is now a disconnect between the Washington political class and everybody else—the insiders versus the outsiders.

When most Americans look at the federal government, all

they see is years of failed policies that have made life harder

for them and their families, and a political class that is well

connected and uninterested in giving them a say in how to

right the ship.

People are still hurting, and they are weary of Washington’s penchant for business as usual.

Georgians sent me—someone who had never run for elected office—to the United States Senate to try and do something about it and change the system. In state after state this year, voters have voiced support for presidential candidates who are not part of the political class.

This is a growing movement, and it is bigger than any one candidate or election victory. Unless the political establishment is willing to learn from the anger felt by millions of Americans who feel left behind, this will not end in November.

True to form, though, political elites prefer tearing down individuals to understanding what created this movement. This movement of Americans wants nothing to do with Washington, and neither endorsements nor criticisms are going to change that.

No matter who our Republican presidential nominee is at the end of this process, one thing is clear: We cannot allow Democrats to double down on the failed policies of the last seven years.
A better course of action would be a candid examination of what can be done to regain the trust of the American people. Let’s start with simply listening to them.

"Let’s start with simply listening to them"

BLOG:

EVEN WITH POLLS DOCUMENTING THAT

ONLY 9% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

APPROVE OF CONGRESS, IT IS BUSINESS AS USUAL;

ENDLESS LOOTING FOR THEIR PAYMASTERS ON WALL

STREET AND SURRENDERING MORE OF OUR BORDERS,

JOBS AND WELFARE TO INVADING MEXICANS!

HILLARY CLINTON SAYS MILLIONS MORE VOTING

ILLEGAL SHOULD BE HANDED OBAMACARE!CLINTON'S PLATFORM IS SIMPLE: BUILD THE MEX

show. Of all the presidential candidates, Clinton is the top recipient of

donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industry,

Politics.

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: FEEDING THEIRBIG PHARMA CRONIES!

US drug prices doubled since 2011

By Brad Dixon18 March 2016

According to a new report by the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, the average price of brand-name drugs increased by 16.2 percent last year. Between 2011 and 2015, branded prescription drug prices have nearly doubled, rising 98.2 percent. Since 2008, the prices have increased by a whopping 164 percent.

Drug spending rose by 5.2 percent in 2015. This was about half the increase seen in 2014, the year of the largest hike since 2003.

The report is based upon prescription use data for members with drug coverage provided by Express Scripts plan sponsors. In assessing changes in plan costs, the report distinguishes between the relative contributions from changes in patient utilization (e.g. more patients being prescribed the drug) and changes in the unit price of the drug (e.g., price hikes).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most drug spending was on traditional drugs (small-molecule, solid drugs) to treat conditions such as heartburn, depression and diabetes. The recent trend has been a shift to specialty drugs. Still, within traditional therapy categories there were significant increases in spending on medications to treat diabetes, heartburn and ulcers, and skin conditions.

Diabetes medications remain the most expensive of the traditional drug categories. Drug spending in this category increased by 14 percent, with the hike being equally influenced by increased utilization of the drugs and rise in unit cost. Three diabetes treatments—Lantus, Januvia and Humalog—were among the top five drugs in terms of spending across all traditional therapy classes.

Although not discussed in the report, an investigation by Bloomberg News last year found evidence of “shadow pricing” by drug manufacturers, where companies raise their prices immediately after their competitors do so. The investigation found that the prices of diabetes drugs Lantus and Lemivir had increased in tandem 13 times since 2009, and evidence of similar shadow pricing for the drugs Humalog and Novolog.

Heartburn and ulcer drugs saw a 35.6 percent increase in spending, almost solely due to the rise in unit cost. Although 92.3 percent of the medications filled in this category were generic, the price unit trend was heavily influenced by the increase in prices of branded drugs such as Nexium, Dexilant and Prevacid.

Treatments for skin conditions also saw a significant increase of 27.8 percent in spending, again due almost completely to rises in the unit costs of the medications. The report notes that these increases occurred for both generic and branded therapies, largely due to industry consolidation through mergers and acquisitions leading to less competition in the market. While 86.3 percent of the drugs filled were generic, many of the generic versions saw sharp increases in unit cost, including the two most widely used corticosteroids, clobetasol (96.2 percent) and triamcinolone (28 percent).

While the overall spending increase for traditional therapy classes was nominal (0.6 percent), the primary factor for the increase in spending came from specialty medications. Specialty medications require special education and close patient monitoring, such as drugs to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis or cystic fibrosis. Spending on specialty drugs rose by 17.8 percent in 2015. The report found that 37.7 percent of drug spending was for specialty drugs in 2015, and the figure is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2018.

Spending in this category was topped by inflammatory conditions—such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases and psoriasis—which rose by 25 percent, driven by a 10.3 percent increase in utilization and 14.7 percent rise in unit cost. The average cost per prescription in 2015 was $3,035.95. The medications Humira Pen and Enbrel, which captured more than 66 percent of the market share for this class, saw unit cost increases of more than 17 percent.

Spending on oncology therapies increased by 23.7 percent, due to both increased use (9.3 percent) and increased unit cost (14.4 percent). New cancer therapies average $8,000 per prescription and the average cancer regimen is around $150,000 per patient. Between 2005 and 2015, the anti-cancer drug Gleevec, manufactured exclusively by Novartis, has seen its price more than triple, with an annual cost of $92,000. In 2015, the year prior to the drug’s patent expiration, Novartis increased the unit cost of the drug by 19.3 percent. This is a common practice for companies facing patent expiration.
Drug spending on cystic fibrosis treatments rose by a significant 53.4 percent, largely based on increases in unit cost (40.9 percent vs. 13.3 percent from patient utilization). This rise was largely due to use of the new oral combination therapy, Orkambi, which became available in mid-2015. The drug costs more than $20,000 per month.

The report forecasts that between 2016 and 2018 spending will increase annually by 7-8 percent for traditional drugs and around 17 percent for specialty drugs.

The prices of generic drugs have on average decreased, although there are notable exceptions. Pharmaceutical companies like Horizon Pharma, Turing Pharmaceuticals, and Valeant Pharmaceuticals have purchased generic drugs and then significantly hiked their prices.

The report notes the emergence of “captive pharmacies” in 2015 as another factor responsible for higher drug spending. Captive pharmacies are owned or operated by pharmaceutical manufacturers and tend to promote their manufacturer’s drugs, rather than generic or other low-cost alternatives. The report gives as examples the arrangements between Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Philidor Rx Services, and between Horizon Pharma and Linden Care Pharmacy.

The Express Scripts data matches the findings released earlier this year by the Truveris OneRx National Drug Index, which found that branded drugs rose by 14.8 percent in 2015.

Despite the widespread media publicity of the notorious drug price hikes by companies like Turing and Valeant, pharmaceutical companies have continued to inflate prices in 2016, with Pfizer leading the way with an average price hike of 10.6 percent for 60 of its branded drugs.

Workers are rightly outraged at the skyrocketing price of drugs. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted last year found that 74 percent of respondents felt that the drug companies put profits before people.

The political establishment, however, has sought both to exploit this anger for electoral support and to direct it into safe channels that do not disrupt the status quo.

A congressional hearing held in January placed a spotlight on the price-gouging practices of HYPERLINK Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing Pharmaceuticals, whose dubious activities were highlighted in a pair of congressional memos. The purpose of the hearing, however, was not probe the underlying causes of the sharp rise in drug prices. Instead, legislators sought to safeguard the profits of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole through a verbal lambasting of the industry’s most notorious culprits.

Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, who has stated that he will support Clinton if he loses the Democratic nomination, received $82,094 in donations from the industry. Sanders has proposed a series of minor reforms to address drug prices, such as the re-importation of drugs from Canada, allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers, and decreasing the patent life of branded drugs.
None of the candidates, including the “democratic socialist” Sanders, challenge the private ownership of the pharmaceutical industry in which everything from research and development and clinical testing to drug pricing and promotion are subordinated to the profit interests of corporations.

.............. what would have happened to this once great nation if

instead of handing billions in welfare to criminal banksters, and

millions of our jobs to illegals.... we handed free education to

America's youth.but then we wouldn't need to import boatloads of educated people

to take our tech jobs!!!OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: TRANSFERRING THE NATION'S

WEALTH TO THE 1%, JOBS AND WELFARE TO ILLEGALS

TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND BUILD THE DEM

PARTY BASE WITH MEX FLAG WAVERS“My greatest worry is working all my life, constantly chasing debt

Study: Worsening conditions for young

people throughout the developed world

By Nick Barrickman15 March 2016

Incomes for young people born between 1980 and 1994 have hit unprecedented low levels in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, according to a recent investigative series conducted by the UK’s Guardian publication titled “Millenials: The Trials of Generation Y.” The study draws on income statistics from eight of the world’s 15 most advanced economies, including the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, France, Italy, Spain and Germany to paint a picture of dimming social prospects for young people throughout the developed world.

The Guardian cites as contributing factors “a combination ofdebt, joblessness, globalization, demographics and risinghouse prices” which “have grave implications for everythingfrom social cohesion to family formation.” Whereas during the1970s and 1980s people in their 20s averaged more than thenational income, the study found that young couples and families in five of the eight countries listed made 20 percentless than the rest of the population today.

“It is likely to be the first time in industrialized history, save for periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults have fallen so far when compared with the rest of society,” the British newspaper states.

In the US and Italy, incomes were lower in actual figures than they were a generation ago, with Americans averaging a yearly salary of $27,757 in 2010 compared to $29,638 in 1979. The study notes that young US workers currently make less than those in retirement. In France, households headed by individuals under the age of 50 made less disposable income than recent retirees. In Italy, an 80-year-old pensioner possesses more income than someone under the age of 35.

In many cases, the 2008 financial collapse simply accelerated trends that were already underway. Housing prices in Great Britain and Australia are among the most expensive in the developed world. The average price for a home in Sydney, Australia, is $1 million in Australian dollars, more than 12 times the median household income in the city. The average home loan for first-time buyers in New South Wales is A$424,000. This figure has increased by 43 percent in the past four years alone.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, housing prices have increased more sharply and for a longer period in the past 20 years than at any time since 1880. The Guardian notes that housing costs in the UK and Australia have been increasing at a “neck and neck” pace ahead of the average household income. “We’re heading for a world where rates of home ownership among young people are below 50 percent for the first time,” states Alan Milburn of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, adding that the UK is heading toward becoming “a society that is permanently divided.” Income for those in their late 20s in the UK remain below levels seen in 2004-2005.

A recent survey by British polling firm Ipsos Mori found that 54 percent of those questioned thought the next generation was or would be worse off than the previous. “It’s the highest we’ve measured—it’s completely flipped around from April 2003,” stated Bobby Duffy, managing director of Ipsos Mori’s Social Research Institute of the findings.

In addition, more than a quarter of individuals in this age group live with their parents. An average woman in this age group today waits 7.1 years longer to become married than in 1981; and the average age of childbirth for young families is nearly four years later than those in 1974.

“My greatest worry is working all my life, constantly chasingdebt and never being to own a house or have children,”writes a millennial named “Gemma” in a section of the seriesentitled “#Itsnotjustyou: Millenials share their secret fears.”Continuing, she states: “The cost of renting privately is rising,the cost of travelling is rising, the cost of living is rising andyet the salaries don’t reflect this rise. … I am worried thatcapitalism is pushing this and creating a greater wealthinequality gap. It seems unsustainable and to be drivingpeople apart—a recent example is the demonization of ourown NHS service and the junior doctors.” Many others share similar nightmares.

The study comes amid other findings revealing similar declines in living standards for youth in the developed world. A 2013 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report found nearly 30 million youth in the developed capitalist countries without a job or an education, the basic requirements for functioning in society.

The circumstances faced by young people throughout the world speak to a systemic breakdown of the social order in both the so-called developing and advanced countries, which has been compounded by war and militarism, consecutive attacks on living standards and cuts to social programs, which invariably hit the youngest and most vulnerable the hardest. Though not covered by the study, European nations such as Greece have been reduced to conditions unseen in the developed world, with youth unemployment at over 60 percent due to attacks on living standards demanded by the European Union and enforced by consecutive governments, both right and “left,” under Syriza.
The authors of the Guardian investigation, in an effort to divert rising anger away from the social system responsible for the poverty, destruction of living standards and attendant social misery, single out the relatively-better off living conditions of retirees in order to make a case for attacking pensions and other benefits accruing to the older generation. The publication quotes a recently published interview with Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank (ECB), who states “in many countries the labor market is set up to protect older ‘insiders’—people with permanent, high-paid contracts and shielded by strong labor laws. … The side-effect is that young people are stuck with lower-paid, temporary contracts and get fired first in crisis times.”

Rather than receiving expanded employment, pay and

access to better living conditions, it is proposed that the

young and the old fight over the rapidly diminishing

resources made available by bourgeois public officials and

the wealthy.While Draghi advocates attacking the pay and benefits of older workers, the ECB head has funneled billions into the hands of European banking institutions; recently upping the monthly total of cash infusions to €80 billion from €60 billion previously and adding to the wealth of the financial elite.

The fate of retirement benefits and wages under the profit-system is pointed to when the newspaper notes “pensioners’ incomes are likely to rise for at least the next decade, after which future generations will be unlikely to benefit [due to] a drop in home ownership, weaker private sector pension schemes and the expectation that state pensions will be less generous in the future.”

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: SERVE THE

RICH, WALL STREET CRONIES AND LA

RAZA, THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of

AMERICA....

Then hand what is left of the American middle

class the tax bills for bailouts and Mexico's

crime wave in our open borders and LA

RAZA "The Race" welfare state on our backs!"The Clinton family charities have outsourced many U.S. white-collar jobs to foreign college graduates instead of hiring American college graduates."

March 11, 2016

Oops! Clinton Foundation outsourced tech jobs to

H-1B visa holders

The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which does “wonderful work” (if you ask Hillary), also has sought to hire a lot of foreign tech workers brought to the country under the H-1B visa program to fill jobs Americans supposedly can’t be found to perform. Breitbart reports:

The Clinton family charities have outsourced many U.S. white-collar jobs to foreign college graduates instead of hiring American college graduates.The outsourcing started in 2004 and it continues to this year. When asked if the foundation is still hiring foreign white-collar workers via the controversial H-1B visa program, Vena Cooper, one of the foundation’s personnel officers, responded “We do.”The foundations declined to answer questions from Breitbart News, but available data shows they sought to hire up to 130 foreign graduates. That’s roughly half the number of 250 jobs outsourced by Disney last October, which has reignited political criticism of the middle-class outsourcing program. The 130 foreign graduates sought by the Clinton’s foundations were and are not immigrants. Instead, they’re temporary “guest” workers who fill outsourced professional jobs for up to six years. The Clintons’ foreign graduates have been hired via the H-1B visa program that also is used by Disney and U.S. corporations and universities to employ a population of roughly 650,000 young and cheap foreign professionals in business, design, healthcare, software, science, education, p.r. and media and pharmaceutical jobs. After their six years in the United States, most H-1Bs returnhome with the work-experience and connections that help them compete against U.S. professionals in the global marketplace. The young foreign H-1B professionals are also used to push down average salaries earned by experienced and older American professionals. In turn, those salary cuts boost profit margins and company values on Wall Street.

Hey, those private jets and 5-star luxury hotels favored by the traveling Clintons don’t come cheap, so they’ve got to pinch pennies wherever they can. And besides, a lot of their money comes from foreign sources, sothey’re just returning it to some of the home countries.

US employment report: Payrolls rise,

wages fall

By Barry Grey5 March 2016

President Barack Obama seized on the February employment report, released Friday morning by the Labor Department, to tout the supposed “success” of his economic policies and paint a picture of a thriving US economy. The report, which showed a larger-than-predicted growth in private nonfarm payrolls of 242,000 jobs, confirmed that the US economy was “the envy of the world,” Obama told reporters at a White House appearance.

“The fact of the matter is that the plans that we have put in place to grow the economy have worked,” he boasted.” He derided “an alternative reality out there from some of the political folks that America is down in the dumps.” He countered, “America is pretty darn great right now.”

He did not attempt to explain why the “alternative reality,” which his labor secretary, Thomas Perez, attributed to “fear-mongers and fact-deniers,” is believed by tens of millions of Americans, whose anger over economic injustice is dramatically reflected in the current election campaign.

One does not have to look too closely at the Labor Department’s report, however, to get an idea of what is fueling the social indignation of working people in the eighth and final year of the Obama administration. Behind the top-line number for new jobs and the quasi-fictional official unemployment rate of only 4.9 percent, ongoing trends with disastrous consequences for the working class are evident. They account for two other important indices in the report: a decline in average earnings from the previous month of 3 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $25.35, bringing the increase for the year down to just 2.2 percent, and a fall in the average private-sector workweek of 0.2 hours to 34.4 hours, a two-year low.

These two figures arise from the fact that the vast bulk of new jobs created in February were low-wage and a huge percentage were part-time. The low-paying service sector—retail, bars and restaurants, health care—accounted for 245,000 jobs. The reality of recession in basic production was reflected in a 16,000 decline in manufacturing and the loss of another 19,000 mining jobs, bringing to 171,000 the total decline in mining since September 2014. The only better-paying industrial sector that saw an increase was construction, which recorded a gain of 19,000.

Another figure highlights the hollow and socially regressive character of Obama’s so-called “recovery.” The financial cable network CNBC pointed out that according to the Labor Department’s household survey, which is the basis for the unemployment rate figure (the figure on payroll growth is derived from a separate survey of business establishments), full-time jobs increased in February by only 65,000, while part-time positions increased by 489,000. This means that a mere 11.7 percent of new jobs in February were full-time!

These statistics point to the fact that the American ruling class, through its instrument, the Obama administration, has utilized the financial crash of 2008, for which it was responsible, to fundamentally reorganize the US economy, transforming it into a low-wage system. The millions of decent-paying jobs that were destroyed have been largely replaced by poverty-wage, part-time and temporary jobs.

The median household income has fallen sharply. Pensions and health benefits have been gutted, schools closed by the thousands, teachers and other public workers laid off by the millions. At the other end, the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury have pumped trillions of dollars into the financial markets, driving up the stock market and bringing the concentration of wealth at the very top to unprecedented levels. This is what Obama lauds as “success.”

Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain mired in long-term unemployment. The number of long-term unemployed, defined as without work for 27 weeks or more, was essentially unchanged at 2.2 million in February. This number has not shifted significantly since last June. The long-term jobless accounted last month for 27.7 percent of the unemployed, a far higher percentage than in any previous period categorized as an economic recovery.

A broader measure of unemployment that includes people working part-time but wanting full-time work and those too discouraged to seek employment registered 9.7 percent last month, nearly double the official jobless rate. There are, in addition, millions of people who have dropped out of the labor market and are not even counted in government employment reports.

While the employment-to-population ratio edged up to 59.8 percent and the labor force participation rate rose slightly to 62.9 percent, both measures remain extraordinarily low by historical standards.
The impact of soaring social inequality and falling living standards for broad sections of the population is reflected in a growing crisis in the retail sector. This week, sporting goods chain The Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced it was closing at least 140 of its 463 stores and laying off 3,400 of its 13,000 employees. This follows recent announcements by Walmart, Sears/Kmart and Macy’s of hundreds of store closures and thousands of layoffs.

Hillary Clinton repeatedly claims that she is thechampion of the little guy. It has always been arisible claim, but if any of her supporters (including at the Post) are actually paying attention to the scoundrel, this latest gambit oughtto disabuse them of the notion.

March 7, 2016

The last refuge of the scoundrel Hillary

Samuel Johnson’s aphorism that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel doesn’t apply to Hillary Clinton in her email scandal, because nobody – not even her die-hard supporters – would believe her if she said that she set up the private email server in the interests of the United States. Rather, the last refuge of this scoundrel is to blame everybody else she dealt with at the State Department, in the process impugning not only her own close aides, but career diplomats and other nonpolitical professionals who deserve better.

This strategy is reflected in the campaign’s current mantra that “everybody,” including former secretaries Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, at one time or another sent emails that were later determined to be classified. A recent Washington Post analysis of Hillary’s released classified emails demonstrates that she directly sent at least 104 to various aides and officials, and that they too, including the current secretary of state, John Kerry, occasionally sent out emails through nonsecure servers that were later deemed classified. However, what the analysis also shows is that these government officials, when they did use unsecured servers, at least used government accounts, which provide a measure of security, not a private home-brewed server like Mrs. Clinton’s.The Post’s news editors must be popping a lot of Thorazine, because their coverage of Clinton is increasingly schizophrenic. As longtime readers of the paper know, the news operation is considerably more left-leaning than the editorial side (which occasionally takes a more centrist view). News stories are routinely slanted to present the most favorable liberal perspective and mock or demean opposing outlooks. This tendency is apparent in the Clinton case as well. The Post has broken some important stories in the email scandal, like the recent revelation that the Justice Department granted former Clinton I.T. aide Bryan Pagliano immunity. And the Post’s most heroic figures, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, have separately suggested that the Clinton scandal is the real thing. But since Hillary is the Post’s gal, they seeded the Pagliano report with expert liberal analysis that suggested that the immunity deal is either nothing to get excited about (a weird way to promote a scoop) or actually a good thing for Clinton, while omitting contrary interpretations.

The Post’s analysis of her emails follows the same pattern. On the one hand, the news that Clinton herself personally authored over 100 classified items cuts against her chosen narrative that she got a lot of emails and that she can hardly have been expected to actually read and analyze them all for security issues as she received them or passed them on. On the other hand, the article goes out of its way to suggest that this was an endemic problem at State. And strangely again, the explanation is rather contradictory. We are told that the sending and receipt of classified information was the result of poor security procedures that preceded Clinton’s arrival. But we are also told (in line with claims made by Clinton and her campaign) that there is a culture of “over-classification” in the government. So which is it? Were officials at State too lax about security procedures or too anal? If nothing else, one thing this controversy demonstrates is that the Clinton State Department was pretty much a mess.

But besides the country itself, which is now enduring yet more Clintonian malfeasance in the midst of a critical election, are many individuals that Clinton is cold-bloodily demeaning in an attempt to exonerate herself with the “everybody did it” canard. This rests on the weak premise that other government officials – aides, ambassadors, career officials – occasionally misidentified information as innocuous or insufficiently sensitive to merit security classification. There is little doubt this happened, and continues to happen, as government employees do their best to protect sensitive information but not bog the government down in layers of unnecessary security protocol. But none of the officials identified in the Post analysis did this deliberately by establishing a private home-brewed email system to avoid State Department classification procedures entirely – and this no less, by the head of the State Department itself.

The Post article anonymously quotes one poor soul (identified as a former senior official) whose good name has now been impugned as a careless operator: “I resent the fact that we are in this situation – and we’re in this situation because of Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private email server.”

Calculating those figures, it means that more than 16 percent of the individuals who were subjected to these secondary inquiries (which represent only a small fraction of the workforce) — and, as Roth notes, already recipients of airport clearances — were illegal aliens with no right to work. What's more, Roth also notes that airport authorities routinely fail to annotate their security credentials with the expiration date of aliens' employment authorization documents, meaning that such persons are routinely employed in sterile areas long past their legally authorized right to work.

Which raises the question: Why have rules not been written that simply preclude individuals with limited time authorizations on their work permits or, better yet, who are not legally authorized to live in the United States on a permanent basis, from being employed in secure areas of airports? Is this so onerous, given the importance of securing the safety of the traveling public?

But back to the immediate issue of TSA and its oversight of airport authorities doing the credentialing. There is obviously something seriously amiss.

Why, for instance, is E-Verify not being used in each and every application for credentialing?

Given the obstacles they face, the poor academic performance of immigrant students is not surprising and has been well documented. English-language fluency, test scores, and graduation rates lag far behind. Some researchers have even called the situation a crisis that threatens democracy itself. But more troubling than slow academic progress is the way mass immigration is shifting the educators' focus. When resources and time are diverted from teaching, the quality of education deteriorates. Learning becomes secondary when teachers are trying to keep children safe and well-adjusted.

As Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council testified on Capitol Hill recently: “The cartels understood that the unaccompanied minors would force the Border Patrol to deploy Agents to these crossing areas in order to take the minors into custody. I want to stress this point because it has been completely overlooked by the press,” he told the House Judiciary Committee. The unaccompanied minors could have walked right up to the port of entry and requested asylum if they were truly escaping political persecution or violence. “Why did the cartels drive them to the middle of the desert and then have them cross over the Rio Grande only to surrender to the first Border Patrol Agent they came across?” Judd challenged.

“The reason is that it completely tied up our manpower and allowed the cartels to smuggle whatever they wanted across our border.”

This is just another maddening example of Obama’s warped priorities at work. Instead of building effective walls and enforcing our borders to prevent the coming illegal immigration waves manufactured by criminal racketeers, this administration rushes to build welcome center magnets that shelter the next generation of Democrat voters.

Here’s what we already know from local media reports in Norwich, the city of about 40,000 residents where the murder occurred; the DHS agency responsible for deporting illegal immigrants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), failed to remove Jacques at least three times dating back to 2002. As if this weren’t atrocious enough, Jacques spent 17 years in prison for attempted murder before authorities released him—instead of deporting him—in January of 2015, the Norwich Bulletin reports. Six months later the 41-year-old illegal alien convict stabbed 25-year-old Casey Chadwick to death. Police said Chadwick died of sharp forced injuries to the head and neck. Jacques is being held on a $1 million bond.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. In the last few years illegal immigrants with lengthy criminal histories have been allowed to remain in the U.S. despite being repeat offenders. Judicial Watch has investigated several of the cases and obtained public records from the government. For instance, back in 2008 JW launched a California public records request with the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department to obtain he arrest and booking information on Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador who murdered three innocent American citizens. Ramos was a member of a renowned violent street gang and had been convicted of two felonies as a juvenile (a gang-related assault on a bus passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman) yet he was allowed to remain in the country.

Univision News' national broadcast continues to howl at any legislative attempt to protect local communities by enforing our immigration laws. The latest instance comes from efforts in Wisconsin.

Wednesday evening's newscast featured a story about two enforcement proposals recently filed in Wisconsin: one to ban sanctuary city policies, and the other to ban local governments from issuing official alternate ID's to illegal immigrants.

Anchor María Elena Salinas' introduction to the story was less incendiary than her late-night counterpart, which we covered last week. The "anti-immigrant" framing was presented indirectly ("activists say"...), as opposed to Ilia Calderón's direct indictment of Florida's HB675 (which overwhelmingly passed the House but seems destined to die in the Senate). Nonetheless, the screengrab above (which reads "anti-immigrant proposals") reflects a reversion to classic form.

Largest Civil Disobedience Action of the Century isn’t Anti-Trump, It’s Pro-Democracy

In an article published here Wednesday, Aaron Klein wrongly characterized Democracy Spring as an “Anti-Trump” campaign organized by “radicals…involved in shutting down Donald Trump’s Chicago rally.”

We want to set the record straight, make it clear where we stand on Trump, and reach out to the all the conservatives who agree with us that big money is corrupting our political system.

First, setting aside any opinions on it, the assertion that the Chicago disruption was the work of Democracy Spring is simply untrue. Over 100 organizations have endorsed Democracy Spring. Their independent actions (and funders – George Soros hasn’t given us a dime) are distinct from our collective effort.

Second, while the leaders, organizations, and the vast majority of participants in Democracy Spring have profound and severe disagreements with Donald Trump, our nonviolent, non-partisan campaign is not a response to him.

Nor is it a response to any single candidate, party, or election. Democracy Spring is a response to the corruption of our entire political system, a system dominated by big money and inaccessible to many Americans who face growing barriers to the ballot box.

No matter who you support for president this year, surely we can all agree that our elected officials should work for all of us – not just wealthy special interests and big campaign contributors. In fact, we know many voters support Trump because he calls out this corrupt system and claims to stand outside of it as a self-financing candidate.

To this, we say: we hear you. The

system is corrupt. The economy is rigged. Big

campaign contributors do pull the strings in

Washington. Working people are right to be

angry about trade policy and the betrayal of

the middle class, working families, and the

poor by an elite establishment that profits

from the status quo.

But we also challenge Trump supporters to consider a few things. Our corrupt campaign finance system goes far beyond presidential races and will not change by simply electing a president who supposedly can’t be bought. Without serious policy solutions, whoever we elect Commander-in-Chief will still have to deal with 435 members of Congress who are more eager to appease their donors than their own constituents.

Trump has yet to propose any solutions that would ensure every member of Congress and candidate for local and state office in America are elected in a way that makes them, as James Madison wrote, “solely dependent upon the People as whole – not the rich more than the poor.” If our system only allows us to choose between candidates who are bought by billionaires and billionaires themselves, then it is not a democracy. It is plutocracy.

That is why more than 2,600 American patriots have pledged to risk arrest in Democracy Spring, a massive nonviolent sit-in at the U.S. Capitol this April. The campaign will force Congress to choose between putting hundreds of peaceful defenders of the republic in handcuffs, or simply doing their job and passing reforms to fix our broken system.

It’s true Democracy Spring is led by many organizations associated with the left. But there’s no reason it must remain that way. We are a nonpartisan campaign open to all. And conservatives and liberals agree when it comes to the urgent need for solutions to rebalance the system.

Last year, John Pudner, the political strategist who helped lead

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA)

100%

’s 2014 upset over former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, launched Take Back our Republic to advance conservative solutions to the problem of money in politics. For example, Take Back supports tax credits for small donations to political candidates to encourage more people to become involved in the political process. The group also supports more disclosure of large donors to ensure voters’ right to know who is trying to influence their vote and their lawmakers.

In a recent column, Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief White House ethics lawyer, explained why the current system fails to address the needs and concerns of conservatives. He wrote, “campaign contributions drive spending on earmarks and other wasteful programs — bridges to nowhere, contracts for equipment the military does not need, solar energy companies that go bankrupt on the government’s dime and for-profit educational institutions that don’t educate.” Moreover, he writes, “campaign contributions breed more regulation” as companies use campaign cash to win special legal advantages over their competitors.

Progressives would disagree on public funding to spur clean energy innovation and the characterization of more regulations as necessarily bad, but we stand fully with Painter on his core point: “[Today’s] system is a betrayal of the vision of participatory democracy embraced by the founders of our country.”

Indeed, there is an opportunity today for progressives and conservatives to stand together to defend our republic and win reform that will let us settle our other differences on an even, open playing field where the best ideas and the broadest support are what count – not the backing of a moneyed elite.

Yet – and allegiance to the values that truly make America a great country demand that we make this crystal clear – Donald Trump’s candidacy is making this kind of unity across differences incredibly difficult. We are a nonpartisan campaign but not an amoral one. We are compelled to speak (and I am confident that I can speak for us all) when I say that Trump’s statements, proposed policies, and threats of violence concerning undocumented immigrants, Muslims, the KKK, protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, and others have crossed a very serious line into the territory of fascism and hate speech.

America is better than this. Conservatives are better than this.

Democracy Spring is a nonviolent campaign and, in the tradition of the civil rights movement, will strive to reach out to our most bitter opponents. We will seek unity with all who agree that every American deserves an equal voice and a government of, by, and for the people. Rather than letting our differences divide us, conservatives and progressives of conscience should come together on this common ground and renew our republic.

Politicians from both parties broke the system. It’s going to take voters from both parties — and independents committed to neither — to force our representatives to fix it.

It’s time to demand that Congress listen to the people and pass common-sense solutions to return our government to us all.

"The Sanders campaign represents ahistorical milestone in American politics.Some seven million people have gone to thepolls or attended caucuses to vote for acandidate identified as a socialist, who calls for a “political revolution” to end thedomination of billionaires over Americanpolitical life."

"The 2016 election campaign is unfolding against thebackdrop of eight years of economic upheaval and slump inthe wake of the Wall Street crash, and eight years of theObama administration, which bailed out the banksat the expense of working people and presided over afurther concentration of wealth at the top alongsidea further deterioration of jobs and living standardsfor the vast majority."

The message of Wisconsin

7 April 2016

In the wake of Senator Bernie Sanders’ crushing victory over former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary, the corporate-controlled media and the political establishment have been at pains to dismiss the significance of half a million people voting for a candidate claiming to be a socialist.

Sanders outpolled Clinton in 79 of the state’s 82 counties and dominated nearly every demographic and income group. He won more than 80 percent of the vote among those aged 18 to 29, more than 70 percent of the vote among independents, and defeated Clinton by 54 percent to 44 percent among nonwhite voters under 45 years of age. He has now won seven of the last eight contests for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In its election night coverage, the American media barely reported these figures, showing far greater interest in the fortunes of billionaire demagogue Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner. The media portrayed the victory of Texas Senator Ted Cruz over Trump as a political earthquake while downplaying Sanders’ more sweeping victory over Clinton.

The media consensus was that the Wisconsin result meant little in terms of the Democratic presidential contest. The Washington Post headlined its report, “Sanders wins in Wisconsin, keeping alive his improbable bid for the nomination,” referring in the second paragraph to “Clinton’s still-overwhelming lead in delegates.”

The New York Times wrote off the across-the-board rout of the Democratic frontrunner, declaring, “Mrs. Clinton’s defeat does not significantly dent her comfortable lead in the race for the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination.”

Neither the major newspapers nor the television networks have attempted to grapple with the political implications of a candidate claiming to be socialist locked in an increasingly tight race with the near-unanimous choice of the Democratic Party establishment. On Wednesday, a McClatchy-Marist poll found that Sanders has taken a two-point lead over Clinton among likely Democratic voters nationwide, 49 percent to 47 percent.

The Sanders campaign represents a historicalmilestone in American politics. Some sevenmillion people have gone to the polls orattended caucuses to vote for a candidateidentified as a socialist, who calls for a“political revolution” to end the domination ofbillionaires over American political life.

Two million people have donated to the Sanders campaign, and his rallies routinely attract crowds of 15,000 to 25,000 people. Among young people, in particular, support for Sanders is immense. More people aged 18-29 have voted for Sanders than for Clinton and Trump combined.

The media silence on the subject of the Sanders surge is an expression of political nervousness in the ruling elite. Its concern is not over the messenger, a Vermont senator who has long functioned as a reliable Democratic Party ally. Rather, it is deeply shaken by the message of social and political discontent delivered by millions of people in the United States who are voting for a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist.”

The mass vote for a candidate claiming to be socialist discredits what has become a foundational narrative of American politics: that the United States is a country where the working class is unalterably hostile to any alternative to the “free enterprise” system. Not only socialism, but even liberalism has been virtually banned from official politics, referred to by cowering Democrats as the “L-word,” from which they seek to distance themselves.

Marxists have always insisted that “American exceptionalism” was of a historically limited and relative character. The slow political development of the American working class was bound up with the privileged position of American capitalism, which made possible steadily rising living standards for the working class and thus encouraged illusions in the viability of the profit system.

The change in the objective situation is beginning to produce a corresponding change in consciousness. It is of enormous significance that Sanders has won his greatest support among working class voters under the age of 45. This generation is being politically radicalized by the protracted decay of American capitalism--its decline on the world market and the resulting devastating impact on the jobs and living standards of American workers.

It required social processes maturing over many years to create the conditions where a somewhat anomalous figure, a little-known senator from a tiny state, could disrupt the planned coronation of the Democratic presidential frontrunner.

The 2016 election campaign is unfolding against the backdrop of eight years of economic upheaval and slump in the wake of the Wall Street crash, and eight years of the Obama administration, which bailed out the banks at the expense of working people and presided over a further concentration of wealth at the top alongside a further deterioration of jobs and living standards for the vast majority. It comes as well after 25 years of nearly uninterrupted imperialist war, with vast resources squandered, human and material.

Sanders is riding a wave of economic anger and hostility over social inequality. Despite all efforts to cover it up, it has proven impossible to conceal the deeply rooted sickness of American society: the ever-widening economic gulf between the top one percent (or one-tenth of one percent) and the broad masses who work for a living and produce the wealth. By now, the economic figures are familiar: the financial aristocracy has seized virtually the entire increase in national income over the past two decades; wages and living standards for working people have stagnated or declined; temporary and contract jobs account for all the increase in employment since the 2008 financial crash.

It is under these conditions that there is such a broad popular response to Sanders’ critique of Wall Street and corporate greed. Millions of young people and workers are looking for a way to fight back against the attacks on jobs, living standards and democratic rights, and the mounting threat of war, and they have seized on the Sanders campaign as a means of doing so. As it moves to the left, the American working class is beginning to take up political questions.

Nowhere is this process clearer than in Wisconsin. This is the state where in 2011 a mass movement erupted in the working class and among young people, triggered by the reactionary anti-worker legislation pushed by Governor Scott Walker and enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature. Demonstrators flooded the state capitol and there was a growing movement for a general strike. This was forestalled only by the intervention of the AFL-CIO unions, which blocked any direct action by the working class and diverted the mass opposition into a campaign to recall Walker and replace him with a Democrat committed to similar cuts in wages, benefits and jobs, only carried out in collaboration with the unions.

The Democratic Party cannot be an instrument for combating the social crisis. Like the Republicans, it is unalterably committed to the defense of the profit system and shares responsibility for the bipartisan assault on the working class. The Democrats have moved steadily to the right over the past four decades, abandoning whatever remained of the reformist policies of New Deal liberalism and the social-welfare programs of the 1960s.

The Clintons are the personification of this process. Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 as the candidate of the Democratic Leadership Council, the right-wing formation that embraced the reactionary policies of the Reagan-Bush era. He notoriously pledged to “end welfare as we know it,” eliminating the federal program dating from the 1930s that provided financial support for the long-term unemployed, while unleashing a law-and-order campaign that ended with more black men in prison than attending college.

Hillary Clinton continues this tradition, running as the continuator of the policies of the Obama administration, which has escalated US military aggression in the Middle East while preparing for war with China and Russia, massively expanded the surveillance state, and single-mindedly promoted the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich.

Sanders is likewise a defender of American capitalism, and no one has been more surprised than the candidate himself at the mass response to his campaign. He initially intended to serve as a lightning rod, drawing discontented workers and young people back into the embrace of the Democratic Party, following in the footsteps of Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Howard Dean and Jesse Jackson.

His “socialism” goes no further than 1960s liberalism. While he criticizes Clinton for having supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he explicitly backs the war policies of the Obama administration.
Throughout his political career as mayor of Burlington, congressman and US senator from Vermont, Sanders has never supported any wider challenge to the domination of the corporate-controlled two-party system. He has caucused and voted with the Democrats in both the House and Senate and has supported every Democratic presidential candidate since Walter Mondale in 1984. He is committed to backing Hillary Clinton if she staggers across the finish line ahead of him, telling the New York Daily News this week that Clinton was “far, far preferable to any of the Republican candidates.”

Sanders has won the support of millions not despite, but because of his professions of “democratic socialism.” These have been taken seriously by an electorate that sees socialism as an alternative to the conditions of life created by capitalism. But there is nothing genuinely anti-capitalist in Sanders’ perspective. This was shown most recently in his interview with the Daily News. When asked about his repeated calls to break up the Wall Street banks, Sanders could not explain how it was to be done, in the end declaring that the banks would be allowed to decide how to break themselves up.

It is one thing to recognize the objective significance of the mass support for Sanders. It is quite another to adapt to Sanders politically. The Socialist Equality Party opposes his campaign for president and warns that if he were elected, a Sanders administration would be an instrument of the American ruling elite to confuse and disorient the working class and prepare new attacks, while defending the worldwide interests of American imperialism.

The task of the SEP is to prepare the working class by making clear what it means to fight for socialism, combating illusions in Sanders and all other efforts to divert working people away from a struggle against the capitalist system, and advancing a genuine revolutionary alternative.

Patrick Martin

UNDER BARACK OBAMA (OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS) TWO-THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGALS.

"Under the Obama administration, theDemocrats have spearheaded the attack onwages and benefits for higher paid workers as part of an overall transfer of wealth to thefinancial elite."

Billary and Hillary: these fuckers would parasite off anyone and anything that moves and smells of money!

Hillary University: Bill Clinton

Bagged $16.46 Million from

For-Profit College as State

Dept. Funneled $55 Million

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With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations.

In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton’s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. Progressive billionaire George Soros is also a Laureate financial backer.

As the Washington Post reports, “Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue.” During Bill Clinton’s tenure as Laureate’s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition.

“I meet people all the time who transfer here when they flunk out elsewhere,” agronomy student Arturo Bisono, 25, told the Post. “This has become the place you go when no one else will accept you.”

Others, like Rio state legislator Robson Leite who led a probe into Bill Clinton’s embattled for-profit education scheme, say the company is all about extracting cash, not educating students. “They have turned education into a commodity that focuses more on profit than knowledge,” said Leite.

Progressives have long excoriated for-profit education companies for placing profits over quality pedagogy. Still, for five years, Bill Clinton allowed his face and name to be plastered all over Laureate’s marketing materials. As Clinton Cash reported, pictures of Bill Clinton even lined the walkways at campuses like Laureate’s Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. That Laureate has campuses in Turkey is odd, given that for-profit colleges are illegal there, as well as in Mexico and Chile where Laureate also operates.

Shortly after Bill Clinton’s lucrative 2010 Laureate appointment, Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. began pumping millions of its USAID dollars to a sister nonprofit, International Youth Foundation (IYF), which is run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker. Indeed, State Dept. funding skyrocketed once Bill Clinton got on the Laureate payroll, according to Bloomberg:

A Bloomberg examination of IYF’s public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped: IYF received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department.

Throughout ten Democratic Party debates, Establishment Media have not asked Hillary Clinton a single question about she and her husband’s for-profit education scam.

"This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon."

The dismantling of public education and Obama's education legacy

Part 1

By Nancy Hanover3 June 2016

Under the Obama administration, public education in America has faced an unremitting assault. Never in the history of the United States has schooling—from kindergarten through college—sustained such massive funding cuts as it has during the last seven-and-a-half years.
It has become national policy to de-fund education claiming there is “no money,” for school improvements and the hiring of more teachers even as the US engages in a massive expansion of military and intelligence funding to escalate its unending wars abroad.

There is symmetry involved: we are witnessing a war on public education waged by the ruling elite. Funds have been drained from classrooms and art, music, foreign languages and gym have become luxuries. Up-to-date textbooks and even qualified teachers are disappearing. Sports and other extra-curricular activities have become “pay for play” among endless miscellaneous fees imposed by public schools on families. There has been a proliferation of highly lucrative for-profit “cyber” schools where children’s education consists of sitting in front a computer at home. Public colleges are poorly funded, increasingly overcrowded and have become the source of a lifetime of debt peonage for those choosing to attend.

Paralleling the ever-escalating growth of social inequality, the once-touted “universal leveler,” public education, has become an openly class-based system.

The financial elite and its political spokesmen—both Democrat and Republican—in the White House, the state legislatures and at the local level—have used the economic crisis from 2008 on as a pretext to transfer vast sums out of social programs including education. In addition to funding military aggression overseas, they have provided huge tax cuts for the wealthy and business opportunities in the for-profit sector at the direct expense of educating the working class. Meanwhile Wall Street stock exchanges, corporate cash hoards,and CEO pay have shot to record highs as the financial aristocracy essentially loots society.

This social counterrevolution has been aided and abetted by the collaboration of the teachers’ unions—the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA) and their state and local affiliates. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been diverted from union dues to support Obama, and his heir apparent Hillary Clinton.

The AFT supported Obama in both 2008 and 2012 and was the first to officially endorse Clinton. The NEA has likewise thrown tens of millions of dollars behind their Clinton who as first lady in the 1990s supported her husband’s right-wing policy of “school choice,” which paved the way for the expansion of charter schools.

Corralling workers’ opposition behind Democratic Party politicians has been an essential part of the unions’ suppression of the independent struggles by education workers. The AFT and NEA have worked overtime to betray struggles when they threatened to challenge the status quo, as in Chicago 2012 and 2016, or attempt to divert or snuff out resistance, as in the Detroit teacher walkouts of 2016. Ever eager to remain a partner in education “reform” with the capitalist politicians and fully on board with pro-war policies and nationalism, there is no line the unions will not cross in order to retain their dues base and “seat at the table.”

It is no exaggeration to say that public education has been upended nationally as a result. Under Obama, there has been a net loss of 300,000 school workers while K-12 student enrollment has actually increased. It has become routine for states to cut as much as $1,000 per pupil in a single year from their public schools. In North Carolina and Florida, staggering drops in per-pupil funding have been enacted, from over $10,000 to some $7,000 respectively. Such draconian cuts barely make the news.

Obama’s signature education policy, Race To The Top (RTTT), continued but vastly intensified the pro-charter and edu-business agenda of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act (whose co-sponsor was the liberal Democratic stalwart Edward Kennedy). Charter schools, largely run by for-profit management companies and routinely channeling huge sums to outsourcing business entities, mushroomed under the demands of the federal RTTT competition. The federal government dangled competitive grant money, forcing school districts already reeling from state budget cuts to compete with each other in the race to enact privatization policies. At the same time, hedge fund managers and private investors dove into the education services and high-stakes testing market.

By 2012, 42 out of 50 states passed legislation authorizing charter schools, many allowing teachers without state certification or with “alternate certification.” In general, these new instructors were paid less, had no tenure rights and received substandard health and pension benefits, if any at all. By 2012, the number of charter school students had doubled from their 2007 numbers.

New Orleans was the first city to be entirely charterized, with Detroit now facing the same threat. The city with the highest numbers of charters is Los Angeles, where a reported 100,000 students now attend charters, channeling $500 million annually out of the public school budgets. LA is followed by New York and Philadelphia. Cleveland has 39 percent of their students in charters and Toledo 29 percent with dozens of other American cities running a hybridized traditional/charter educational system.

Under pressure from RTTT, the states not only enacted the legal modifications to make it far easier for charters to open, in many cases they then imposed substantial portions of charter school operating costs on local districts.

In Pennsylvania, where local school districts must transfer a portion of funds to charters, this has led to the near bankruptcy of both Philadelphia and Chester schools. While Philadelphia operated at a $70 million deficit between 2008 and 2013, the city’s charter schools ran a surplus of $117 million. For the 2013-14 school year, the district paid $146 million in interest, with a structural deficit totaling more than half a billion dollars. The district has closed more than 30 schools and reduced 20 percent of its staff since 2012.

The teachers’ unions not only failed to oppose the exponential growth of for-profit charters, their well-heeled union bureaucrats put a major effort into “organizing” them, turning the charters into dues-collection sources.

Not unsurprisingly, Obama’s final education policy initiative—the Every Student Succeeds Act—includes no meaningful new money for traditional public schools but provides substantial new incentives for charter schools. His 2016 budget called for a 50 percent increase in federal support to charters as well, which received bipartisan support.

As part of its promotion of charters, the US Department of Education and the federally funded AmeriCorps have joined with major big business foundations [Walton, Broad] to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Teach for America (TFA). TFA is both a beneficiary and a driver of the privatization movement. Students in TFA-run classrooms, however, are consigned to untrained young adults—who generally quit after one or two years—in what has aptly been called the “amateurization” of teaching. The TFA model has been used to successfully undercut teachers’ rights, pay standards and pension benefits.

In another aspect of the criminal destruction of America’s public education system, thousands of school buildings across the country are rotting on their foundations. The scandalous and unsafe conditions of schools in Detroit and the fact that lead piping was poisoning students is just the tip of the iceberg. The average age of school buildings in the US is 44 years old, with many more than twice that age. A recent study calls for $145 billion per year to bring America’s K-12 public school facilities up to code, a sum that is not even remotely being considered.

Elementary and high schools have, in fact, cut capital spending by 37 percent between 2008 and 2013, with a total of 38 states cutting spending. Nevada, for example, cut capital spending by a massive 81 percent. Some states, such as Michigan and 11 others, provide absolutely no support for capital construction. Moreover, the federal government does not provide support for school building or maintenance. This requires hard-hit localities to fund their school buildings through supplemental property tax levies.

Scandalously, public schools have increasingly become of the objects of charities, GoFundMe campaigns and big business philanthropies.

Billary and Hillary: these fuckers would parasite off anyone and anything that moves and smells of money!

Hillary University: Bill Clinton

Bagged $16.46 Million from

For-Profit College as State

Dept. Funneled $55 Million

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With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations.

In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton’s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. Progressive billionaire George Soros is also a Laureate financial backer.

As the Washington Post reports, “Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue.” During Bill Clinton’s tenure as Laureate’s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition.

“I meet people all the time who transfer here when they flunk out elsewhere,” agronomy student Arturo Bisono, 25, told the Post. “This has become the place you go when no one else will accept you.”

Others, like Rio state legislator Robson Leite who led a probe into Bill Clinton’s embattled for-profit education scheme, say the company is all about extracting cash, not educating students. “They have turned education into a commodity that focuses more on profit than knowledge,” said Leite.

Progressives have long excoriated for-profit education companies for placing profits over quality pedagogy. Still, for five years, Bill Clinton allowed his face and name to be plastered all over Laureate’s marketing materials. As Clinton Cash reported, pictures of Bill Clinton even lined the walkways at campuses like Laureate’s Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. That Laureate has campuses in Turkey is odd, given that for-profit colleges are illegal there, as well as in Mexico and Chile where Laureate also operates.

Shortly after Bill Clinton’s lucrative 2010 Laureate appointment, Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. began pumping millions of its USAID dollars to a sister nonprofit, International Youth Foundation (IYF), which is run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker. Indeed, State Dept. funding skyrocketed once Bill Clinton got on the Laureate payroll, according to Bloomberg:

A Bloomberg examination of IYF’s public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped: IYF received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department.

Throughout ten Democratic Party debates, Establishment Media have not asked Hillary Clinton a single question about she and her husband’s for-profit education scam.

"This dangerous power vacuum has fueled frustration and created an entirely new breed of disenfranchised voters who are fed up with the status quo. These are real people, their anger is palpable, and it’s not going away anytime soon."

The dismantling of public education and Obama's education legacy

Part 1

By Nancy Hanover3 June 2016

Under the Obama administration, public education in America has faced an unremitting assault. Never in the history of the United States has schooling—from kindergarten through college—sustained such massive funding cuts as it has during the last seven-and-a-half years.
It has become national policy to de-fund education claiming there is “no money,” for school improvements and the hiring of more teachers even as the US engages in a massive expansion of military and intelligence funding to escalate its unending wars abroad.

There is symmetry involved: we are witnessing a war on public education waged by the ruling elite. Funds have been drained from classrooms and art, music, foreign languages and gym have become luxuries. Up-to-date textbooks and even qualified teachers are disappearing. Sports and other extra-curricular activities have become “pay for play” among endless miscellaneous fees imposed by public schools on families. There has been a proliferation of highly lucrative for-profit “cyber” schools where children’s education consists of sitting in front a computer at home. Public colleges are poorly funded, increasingly overcrowded and have become the source of a lifetime of debt peonage for those choosing to attend.

Paralleling the ever-escalating growth of social inequality, the once-touted “universal leveler,” public education, has become an openly class-based system.

The financial elite and its political spokesmen—both Democrat and Republican—in the White House, the state legislatures and at the local level—have used the economic crisis from 2008 on as a pretext to transfer vast sums out of social programs including education. In addition to funding military aggression overseas, they have provided huge tax cuts for the wealthy and business opportunities in the for-profit sector at the direct expense of educating the working class. Meanwhile Wall Street stock exchanges, corporate cash hoards,and CEO pay have shot to record highs as the financial aristocracy essentially loots society.

This social counterrevolution has been aided and abetted by the collaboration of the teachers’ unions—the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA) and their state and local affiliates. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been diverted from union dues to support Obama, and his heir apparent Hillary Clinton.

The AFT supported Obama in both 2008 and 2012 and was the first to officially endorse Clinton. The NEA has likewise thrown tens of millions of dollars behind their Clinton who as first lady in the 1990s supported her husband’s right-wing policy of “school choice,” which paved the way for the expansion of charter schools.

Corralling workers’ opposition behind Democratic Party politicians has been an essential part of the unions’ suppression of the independent struggles by education workers. The AFT and NEA have worked overtime to betray struggles when they threatened to challenge the status quo, as in Chicago 2012 and 2016, or attempt to divert or snuff out resistance, as in the Detroit teacher walkouts of 2016. Ever eager to remain a partner in education “reform” with the capitalist politicians and fully on board with pro-war policies and nationalism, there is no line the unions will not cross in order to retain their dues base and “seat at the table.”

It is no exaggeration to say that public education has been upended nationally as a result. Under Obama, there has been a net loss of 300,000 school workers while K-12 student enrollment has actually increased. It has become routine for states to cut as much as $1,000 per pupil in a single year from their public schools. In North Carolina and Florida, staggering drops in per-pupil funding have been enacted, from over $10,000 to some $7,000 respectively. Such draconian cuts barely make the news.

Obama’s signature education policy, Race To The Top (RTTT), continued but vastly intensified the pro-charter and edu-business agenda of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act (whose co-sponsor was the liberal Democratic stalwart Edward Kennedy). Charter schools, largely run by for-profit management companies and routinely channeling huge sums to outsourcing business entities, mushroomed under the demands of the federal RTTT competition. The federal government dangled competitive grant money, forcing school districts already reeling from state budget cuts to compete with each other in the race to enact privatization policies. At the same time, hedge fund managers and private investors dove into the education services and high-stakes testing market.

By 2012, 42 out of 50 states passed legislation authorizing charter schools, many allowing teachers without state certification or with “alternate certification.” In general, these new instructors were paid less, had no tenure rights and received substandard health and pension benefits, if any at all. By 2012, the number of charter school students had doubled from their 2007 numbers.

New Orleans was the first city to be entirely charterized, with Detroit now facing the same threat. The city with the highest numbers of charters is Los Angeles, where a reported 100,000 students now attend charters, channeling $500 million annually out of the public school budgets. LA is followed by New York and Philadelphia. Cleveland has 39 percent of their students in charters and Toledo 29 percent with dozens of other American cities running a hybridized traditional/charter educational system.

Under pressure from RTTT, the states not only enacted the legal modifications to make it far easier for charters to open, in many cases they then imposed substantial portions of charter school operating costs on local districts.

In Pennsylvania, where local school districts must transfer a portion of funds to charters, this has led to the near bankruptcy of both Philadelphia and Chester schools. While Philadelphia operated at a $70 million deficit between 2008 and 2013, the city’s charter schools ran a surplus of $117 million. For the 2013-14 school year, the district paid $146 million in interest, with a structural deficit totaling more than half a billion dollars. The district has closed more than 30 schools and reduced 20 percent of its staff since 2012.

The teachers’ unions not only failed to oppose the exponential growth of for-profit charters, their well-heeled union bureaucrats put a major effort into “organizing” them, turning the charters into dues-collection sources.

Not unsurprisingly, Obama’s final education policy initiative—the Every Student Succeeds Act—includes no meaningful new money for traditional public schools but provides substantial new incentives for charter schools. His 2016 budget called for a 50 percent increase in federal support to charters as well, which received bipartisan support.

As part of its promotion of charters, the US Department of Education and the federally funded AmeriCorps have joined with major big business foundations [Walton, Broad] to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Teach for America (TFA). TFA is both a beneficiary and a driver of the privatization movement. Students in TFA-run classrooms, however, are consigned to untrained young adults—who generally quit after one or two years—in what has aptly been called the “amateurization” of teaching. The TFA model has been used to successfully undercut teachers’ rights, pay standards and pension benefits.

In another aspect of the criminal destruction of America’s public education system, thousands of school buildings across the country are rotting on their foundations. The scandalous and unsafe conditions of schools in Detroit and the fact that lead piping was poisoning students is just the tip of the iceberg. The average age of school buildings in the US is 44 years old, with many more than twice that age. A recent study calls for $145 billion per year to bring America’s K-12 public school facilities up to code, a sum that is not even remotely being considered.

Elementary and high schools have, in fact, cut capital spending by 37 percent between 2008 and 2013, with a total of 38 states cutting spending. Nevada, for example, cut capital spending by a massive 81 percent. Some states, such as Michigan and 11 others, provide absolutely no support for capital construction. Moreover, the federal government does not provide support for school building or maintenance. This requires hard-hit localities to fund their school buildings through supplemental property tax levies.

Scandalously, public schools have increasingly become of the objects of charities, GoFundMe campaigns and big business philanthropies.

OBAMA IS A SOCIOPATH. HE CAN LIE OUT OF HIS BIG MOUTH ABOUT ANYTHING AND THEN GO SERVE HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS AND LA RAZA!

But the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows something that is a troublesome sign for the White House. Only 30 percent of Americans believe that the president “cares a lot” about “the needs and problems of people” like themselves.

The Insiders: Obama’s weakness matters

By Ed Rogers, Updated: September 27, 2013 President Obama speaks to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. (Andrew Burton/Associated Press)

I usually stay away from using current polls to gauge how President Obama is doing, because I think the polls will always be skewed in his favor. I think he still has a reservoir of goodwill, and people also tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. This gives him resiliency and a floor of support, no matter how poorly he performs in office.

But the latest New York Times/CBS News poll shows something that is a troublesome sign for the White House. Only 30 percent of Americans believe that the president “cares a lot” about “the needs and problems of people” like themselves. Just two months ago, 38 percent of Americans felt the president cared “a lot.” It’s also a huge drop from the 54 percent of Americans who felt that way shortly after the president took office in 2009. This drop is especially poignant because the question of “who cares about people like me” has always been a particular strength for President Obama.

In fact, in exit polling conducted after the 2012 election, voters picked Mitt Romney over Obama in the key candidate qualities categories of “shares my values,” “is a strong leader,” and “has a vision for the future.” The only category where voters picked Obama over Romney was in the “cares about people like me” category – 81 to 18 percent! Granted, Obama was being compared to Romney, who struggled to connect with voters throughout the 2012 campaign cycle. But the president’s reelection indicates that his ability to make people feel like he cared about them may have been what tipped many undecided voters to give the president another chance.

Despite the president’s attempts to be a champion for middle -class families through his constant stream of self-serving assertions and campaign-style speeches, it seems Americans are beginning to feel like the president isn’t really doing anything to help them. The president isn’t facing the ballot again. But his approval ratings and his near-term policy agenda are still relevant for the Democrats facing the ballot in November 2014.

Rather than be sensitive to their popularity and approval ratings on various issues, it seems like the White House is throwing in the towel and turning to anger. Senior White House Adviser Dan Pfeiffer even compared Republicans to terrorists during a CNN interview. Maybe this approach makes the most partisan Democrats give themselves a pat on the back, but the public doesn’t like it.

It appears from the polls that the White House and Democratic leadership strategy of refusing to negotiate with their fellow Americans on the United States’ critical budget and debt issues is not working. Refusing to negotiate in Washington on domestic issues is never the right approach. Republicans are certainly making their share of mistakes, but the White House seems determined to go out of their way to embrace and engage America’s enemies, such as Russia, Syria and Iran. The president was left pining for a handshake from Iran’s president during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, yet he insults and turns his back on Republican leaders in Washington. Voters notice this, and the Democrats can only hope it won’t impact their potential at the ballot box next year.

According to a new report by University of California Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez, the gulf between the wealthy and the rest of society has sharply expanded under Obama. The richest one percent now monopolize more than 22 percent of all household income in America. The richest ten percent of the population now control more than half of the nation’s income, 50.4 percent—the highest proportion since the government began collecting income statistics in 1917.

Since 2009, the richest one percent has captured a staggering 95 percent of all income gains. The class war policies of the government—including bank bailouts, “quantitative easing” and an attack on wage and benefits for the working class—have led to a 31.4 percent rise in income for the top one percent. The wealthy have more than recovered the losses that came from the Wall Street collapse of 2008.

Meanwhile, the bottom 99 percent has seen a negligible 0.4 percent rise in income. Tens of millions of workers—who never recovered from the record household income drop of 2007 to 2009—continue to reel from the effects of mass job losses, falling wages, home foreclosures, indebtedness and social service cuts.

17 September 2013

On Monday, US President Barack Obama marked the fifth anniversary of the Wall Street crash of September 15, 2008 with a White House speech that only underscored the unbridgeable chasm that separates the entire political establishment from the broad mass of working people.

Forbes magazine reported that the wealth of the 400 richest Americans had climbed to $2 trillion, a jump from $1.7 trillion in 2012.

“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”

Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)Government of, by, and for the banks

25 May 2013

Five years since the 2008 financial meltdown, the speculation and fraud that caused the crash are back in full force in the United States. Flush with the $85 billion in cash printed up and handed to the banks every month by the Federal Reserve, business at the Wall Street casino is booming. Stock values are at record levels and so are bank profits, amidst declining wages and mass poverty.

Under these conditions, the banks have been pushing to rip up even the very modest restrictions on financial speculation, while broadening the scope of government bailout laws. The aim is simple: to give banks the maximum ability to speculate without constraint, while getting the maximum possible government assistance if and when the bubble collapses.

So close is the bankers’ grip on the reins of government that, no longer content to let their bought-and-paid-for politicians write laws, the banks have taken to doing the work themselves.

This was the case with a bill that passed the House Financial Services Committee this month, HR 992, which significantly expands the number of financial institutions eligible for coverage by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The bill, which passed with majority support by both Democrats and Republicans, amends an earlier law that prevented financial institutions that trade swaps—a set of dangerous and largely unregulated derivatives—from coverage by the FDIC.

The New York Times reported Friday that, according to emails the newspaper examined, 70 out of the bill’s 85 lines were based on the recommendations of Citigroup, one of the largest US banks. Two paragraphs were inserted nearly word-for-word from an email written to lawmakers by the bank.

The bill restricts provisions in the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed on July 21, 2010. This law was largely a publicity measure by the Obama administration, made to appear as a crackdown on financial speculation while in reality allowing the banks to go on with business as usual.

Instead of creating regulations, the Dodd-Frank bill merely mandated that a series of regulations be implemented at some point in the future by regulators. Nearly three years after the bill’s passage, the vast majority of these regulations have not been implemented.

Out of 135 bank regulatory rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank bill, only 40 have been put into effect. The act’s much-vaunted mandate for the creation of a “Volcker rule,” preventing deposit-taking institutions from carrying out financial speculation, remains a dead letter.

Moreover, many of the provisions of the Dodd-Frank bill, toothless as they were, are being scaled back by subsequent acts of Congress, such as HR 992, described above.

Even those regulations that have been implemented have been even further weakened by regulators to comply with the demands of the banks. Last week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted to implement regulations on derivatives—speculative financial products based on other asset values—that were significantly weakened from those that were proposed under Dodd-Frank.

The Commission had initially proposed that the purchasers of derivatives be required to contact five banks when seeking to set the price of a contract. Under the new law, purchasers are only required to contact two banks, further tightening the monopoly of a handful of institutions that dominate the largely unregulated multitrillion-dollar derivatives market.

The bill likewise originally proposed that derivatives be traded on electronic exchanges similar to stock markets, so that buyers would have a better understanding of prices across the market, making price gouging by issuers more difficult. But the final rules allow for much of derivatives trading to take place over the phone, making it nearly impossible to regulate.

“I’m not here to punish banks!” Barack Obama – State of the Union – NOW MOST OF THESE CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WORK IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRAITON NOW!

Despite a mountain of evidence—including a voluminous 2011 report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations—that the 2008 financial crash was directly linked to rampant lawbreaking by Wall Street, not a single executive at a major bank has been criminally prosecuted, much less gone to jail.

The Wall Street giants emerged from the financial crisis larger and more powerful than ever, and, as shown by government inquiries into JPMorgan’s $6 billion trading loss last year, their activities are just as speculative and parasitic as before the crash.

These factors, combined with the vast amounts of money being pumped into the financial markets by central banks make a new financial crash all but inevitable.

Throughout all this, the role of the government has been to cover up and facilitate the banks’ crimes, seeking to create the appearance of regulation, while allowing Wall Street to operate with impunity.

The main nexus between the banks and government is the Obama administration itself, which, with every new appointment, becomes ever more a government of, by, and for the financial oligarchy.

NOW MOST OF THESE CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WORK IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRAITON NOW!

In January Obama appointed as treasury secretary Jacob Lew, who earned millions of dollars as the chief operating officer of Citigroup’s Alternative Investments unit, which made bets against the housing market as it collapsed.

NOW MOST OF THESE CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WORK IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRAITON NOW!

This month Obama appointed Penny Pritzker, a hotel heiress and private equity firm operator, as commerce secretary. With a net worth of $1.85 billion, Pritzker is the wealthiest person in US history to serve in the president’s cabinet.

These developments demonstrate the impossibility of reining in the financial criminals within the confines of the present political system. The government and both parties serve as little more than errand boys for the bankers, who exercise a dictatorship over political life in the United States.

Andre Damon

OBAMANOMICS: BANK PROFITS and CRIMES SOAR UNDER OBAMA… so do foreclosures!

FORECLOSED ON AMERICA: HOW BARACK OBAMA and HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS LOOTED A NATION AND THEN PROFITEERED OFF THEIR CRIMES

Sen. Feinstein's Husband Cashes In on Crisis Ethical? Ethnics never enter into a deal Feinstein is pushing in Congress! FEINSTEIN IS A MAJOR OBAMA DONOR. SHE MAKES SIGNIFICATN "CONTRIBUTIONS" TO DEMS ALL OVER THE NATION SO THEY KEEP THEIR MOUTH SHUT ABOUT HER LOOTING OFF ELECTED OFFICE.

On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms, the Washington Times reported on Tuesday. Mrs. Feinstein's intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn't a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments - not direct federal dollars.

unfortunately this is only one of the many “DEALS” Feinstein and her husband, Richard C. Blum have looted off of.

TWO OF FEINSTEIN’S BIGGEST DONORS ARE CRIMINAL BANKSTERS WELLS FARGO and BANK of AMERICA. SHE FRONTS FOR THESE BANKS IN THE SENATE LIKE SHE DOES RED CHINA! BOTH BANKS ARE AT THE TOP OF THE LIST FOR THE FORECLOSURE DEBACLE THEY ARE NOW PROFITEERING FROM.

“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”

CRONY CAPITALISM… predicated on keeping wages depressed to third world levels for his billionaire donors!

Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses…and Muslim Dictators

OBAMA’S HAREM OF CORRUPT BANKSTERS… DO A GOOGLE FOR HOW MANY ENDED UP WORKING IN HIS ADMINISTRATION.

“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”

OBAMAnomics at work: SOARING RICHES
FOR THE 1%, SOARING UNEMPLOYMENT FOR AMERICANS (LEGALS), SOARING PROFITS and
CRIMES FOR OBAMA’S BANKSTER DONORS and SOARING TAXES TO PAY FOR MEXICO’S
WELFARE STATE IN OUR BORDERS!

Much of the rise in suburban poverty
is due to the impoverishment of working families already living there. The
decline in manufacturing, the Great Recession, and widespread foreclosures have
left many longtime suburban families reeling

Much of the rise in suburban poverty
is due to the impoverishment of working families already living there. The
decline in manufacturing, the Great Recession, and widespread foreclosures have
left many longtime suburban families reeling.

17 September
2013

On Monday, US President Barack Obama marked the fifth anniversary of the
Wall Street crash of September 15, 2008 with a White House speech that only
underscored the unbridgeable chasm that separates the entire political
establishment from the broad mass of working people.

Forbes magazine reported that the wealth of
the 400 richest Americans had climbed to $2 trillion, a jump from $1.7 trillion
in 2012.

HOW CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKS and the MEXICAN
FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA FUNDED BY BARACK OBAMA, BUILT AN OBAMA DICTATORSHIP.

“Slowly, Mr. Obama has
changed the United States into another country — the Soviet States of America —
an authoritarian state where false promises of "hope and change" were
used to manipulate the public.”

OBAMA HAS PROFESSED THAT JP MORGAN IS HIS PAYMASTERS AND GOOD BANKSTER!''

For much of Obama’s tenure, Jamie Dimon
was known as the White House’s “favorite banker.” According to White House
logs, Dimon visited the White House at least 18 times, often to talk to his
former subordinate at JPMorgan, William Daley, who had been named White House
chief of staff by Obama after the Democratic rout in the 2010 elections.

OBAMA PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL
BANKSTER DONORS NO PRISON TIME AND NO REAL REGULATION. DID HE DELIVER?

The JPMorgan scandal also throws into relief the government’s failure to
prosecute those responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown. Despite
overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing and criminality uncovered by two federal
investigations last year, those responsible have been shielded from
prosecution.

BANK PROFITS SOARING!

YES, UNDER THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT OBAMA, LIFE IS GOOD FOR HIS CRIMINAL
BANKSTER DONORS. THEIR PROFITS and CRIMES ARE SOARING AND SO ARE FORECLOSURES.

“Records show that four out
of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants -
Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and
Citigroup ($358,054).”

*

A CASE OF INCEST! OBAMA PARTNERS WITH WALL STREET’S BIGGEST CRIMINAL
BANKSTERS, MOST OF WHOM NOW WORK IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION!

CRONY CAPITALISM: OBAMA PROTECTS JP MORGAN, THE BIGGEST BANKSTER CRIMINALS
IN AMERICAN HISTORY, AND ONE OF OBAMA’S BIGGEST BANKSTER DONORS!

Nearly five years after the greatest financial crash since the Great
Depression, triggered by rampant illegality and fraud on the part of the major
banks, not a single major institution or leading bank executive has been
indicted, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.

The criminal charges are part of an attempt by the Obama administration to
create the appearance that it is cracking down on Wall Street criminality,
while it continues to shield top executives and allow banking fraud and
criminality to continue unabated.

“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are
employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG
($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”

THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT PROMISED HIS
CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS NO real REGULATION, NO PRISON TIME, AND UNLIMITED
PILLAGING OF THE NATION’S ECONOMY!

DESPITE THE DEVASTATION THESE BANKSTERS HAVE
CAUSED AMERICANS, THEIR PROFITS SOARED GREATER DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS,
THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH. SO HAVE FORECLOSURES!

Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees
of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806),
JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

“Barack Obama's favorite
banker faces losses of $2 billion and possibly more -- all
because of the complex, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't trading in exotic
financial instruments that he has so ardently lobbied Congress not to
regulate.”

Is JPMorgan's Loss a Canary in a Coal
Mine?

Posted: 05/16/2012 4:49 pm

That sound of shattered glass you've been hearing is the iconic portrait of
Jamie Dimon splintering as it hits the floor of JPMorgan Chase. As the Good
Book says, "Pride goeth before a fall," and the sleek, silver-haired,
too-smart-for-his-own-good CEO of America's largest bank has been turning every
television show within reach into a confessional booth. Barack Obama's favorite
banker faces losses of $2 billion and possibly more -- all
because of the complex, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't trading in exotic
financial instruments that he has so ardently lobbied Congress not to regulate.

Once again, doing God's work -- that is, betting huge sums of money with
depositor funds knowing that you are too big to fail and can count on taxpayers
riding to your rescue if your avarice threatens to take the country down -- has
lost some of its luster. The jewels in Dimon's crown sparkle with a little less
grandiosity than a few days ago, when he ridiculed Paul Volcker's ideas for
keeping Wall Street honest as "infantile."

To find out more about what this all means, I turned to Simon Johnson, once
chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and now a professor at MIT's
Sloan School of Management and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for
International Economics. He and his colleague James Kwak founded the
now-indispensable website baselinescenario.com.
They co-authored the bestselling book 13
Bankers and a most recent book, White House Burning,
an account every citizen should read to understand how the national deficit
affects our future.

Bill Moyers: If Chase began to collapse because of risky betting,
would the government be forced to step in again?

Simon Johnson: Absolutely, Bill. JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail.
Hopefully in the future we can move away from this system, but right now it is
too big. It's about a $2.5 trillion dollar bank in terms of total assets.
That's roughly 20 percent of the U.S. economy, comparing their assets to our
GDP. That's huge. If that bank were to collapse -- I'm not saying it will --
but if it were to collapse, it would be a shock to the economy bigger than that
of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and as a result, they would be protected by
the Federal Reserve. They are exactly what's known as too big to fail.

Moyers: I was just looking at an interview
I did with you in February of 2009, soon after the collapse of 2008 and you
said, and I'm quoting, "The signs that I see... the body language, the
words, the op-eds, the testimony, the way these bankers are treated by certain
congressional committees, it makes me feel very worried. I have a feeling in my
stomach that is what I had in other countries, much poorer countries, countries
that were headed into really difficult economic situations. When there's a
small group of people who got you into a disaster and who are still powerful,
you know you need to come in and break that power and you can't. You're
stuck." How do you feel about that insight now?

Johnson: I'm still nervous, and I think that the losses that JPMorgan
reported -- that CEO Jamie Dimon reported -- and the way in which they're
presented, the fact that they're surprised by it and the fact that they didn't
know they were taking these kinds of risks, the fact that they lost so much
money in a relatively benign moment compared to what we've seen in the past and
what we're likely to see in the future -- all of this suggests that we are
absolutely on the path towards another financial crisis of the same order of
magnitude as the last one.

Moyers: Should Jamie Dimon resign? I ask that because as you know and
as we've discussed, Chase and other huge banks have been using their enormous
wealth for years to, in effect, buy off our politicians and regulators. Chase
just had
to pay up almost three quarters of a billion dollars in settlements
and surrendered fees to settle one case alone, that of bribery and corruption
in Jefferson County, Alabama. It's also paid out billions of dollars to settle
other cases of perjury, forgery, fraud and sale of unregistered securities. And
these charges were for actions that took place while Mr. Dimon was the CEO.
Should he resign?

Johnson: I think, Bill, there should be an independent investigation
into how JPMorgan operates both with regard to these losses and with regard to
all of the problems that you just identified. This investigation should be
conducted separate from the board of directors. Remember that the shareholders
and the board of directors absolutely have an incentive to keep JPMorgan Chase
as a too-big-to-fail bank. But because it is that kind of bank, its downside
risk is taken by the Federal Reserve, by the taxpayer, by the broader economy
and all citizens. We need to have an independent, detailed, specific
investigation to establish who knew what when and what kind of wrongdoing
management was engaged in. On the basis of that, we'll see what we'll see and
who should have to resign.

Moyers: Dimon is also on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York, which, as everyone knows is supposed to regulate JPMorgan. What in the
world are bankers doing on the Fed board, regulating themselves?

Johnson: This is a terrible situation, Bill. It goes back to the
origins, the political compromise at the very beginning of the Federal Reserve
system about a hundred years ago. The bankers were very powerful back then,
also, and they got a Federal Reserve system in which they had a lot of
representation. Some of that has eroded over time because of previous abuses,
but you're absolutely right, the prominent bankers, including most notably,
Jamie Dimon, are members of the board of the New York Federal Reserve, a key
element in the Federal Reserve system. And he should, under these
circumstances, absolutely step down from that role. It's completely
inappropriate to have such a big bank represented in this fashion. The New York
Fed claims there's no impropriety, there's no wrong doing and he doesn't
involve himself in supervision and so on and so forth. Perhaps, but why does
Mr. Dimon, a very busy man, take time out of his day to be on the board of the
New York fed? He is getting something from this. It's a trade, just like
everything else on Wall Street.

Moyers: He dismissed criticism of his dual role yesterday by
downplaying the role of the Fed board. He said
it's more like an "advisory group than anything else." I had to check
my hearing aid to see if I'd heard that correctly.

Johnson: Well, I think he is advising them on lots of things. He
also, of course, meets with some regularity with top Treasury officials, and
some reports say that he meets with President Obama with some regularity. The
political access and connections of Mr. Dimon are second to none. One of his
senior executives was until recently chief of staff in the White House, if you
can believe that. I really think this has gone far enough. Under these kinds of
circumstances with this amount of loss of control over risk management, what we
need to have is Mr. Dimon step down from the New York Federal Reserve Board.

Moyers: He told shareholders at their annual meeting Tuesday -- they
were meeting in Tampa, Florida -- that these
were "self-inflicted mistakes" that "should never
have happened." Does that seem reasonable to you?

Johnson: Well, it's all very odd, Bill, and I've talked to as many
experts as I can find who are at all informed about what JPMorgan was doing and
how they were doing it and nobody really understands the true picture. That's
why we need an independent investigation to establish -- was this an isolated
incident or, more likely, the breakdown of a system of controlling and managing
risks. Keep in mind that JPMorgan is widely regarded to be the best in the
business at risk management, as it is called on Wall Street. And if they can't
do this in a relatively benign moment when things are not so very bad around
the world, what is going to happen to them and to other banks when something
really dramatic happens, for example, in Europe in the eurozone?

Moyers: Some of his supporters are claiming that only the bank has
lost on this and that there's absolutely no chance that the loss could have
threatened the stability of the banking system as happened in 2008. What do you
say again to that?

Johnson: I say this is the canary in the coal mine. This tells you
that something is fundamentally wrong with the way banks measure, manage and
control their risks. They don't have enough equity funding in their business.
They like to have a little bit of equity and a lot of debt. They get paid based
on return on equity, unadjusted for risk. If things go well, they get the
upside. If things go badly, the downside is someone else's problem. And that
someone else is you and me, Bill. It goes to the Federal Reserve, but not only,
it goes to the Treasury, it goes to the debt.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the increase in debt relative
to GDP due to the last crisis will end
up being 50 percent of GDP, call that $7 trillion dollars, $7.5
trillion dollars in today's money. That's extraordinary. It's an enormous shock
to our fiscal accounts and to our ability to pay pensions and keep the
healthcare system running in the future. For what? What did we get from that?
Absolutely nothing. The bankers got some billions in extra pay, we get
trillions in extra debt. It's unfair, it's inefficient, it's unconscionable,
and it needs to stop.

Moyers: Wasn't part of the risk that Dimon took with taxpayer
guaranteed deposits? I mean, if I had money at JPMorgan Chase, wouldn't some of
my money have been used to take this risk?

Johnson: Again, we don't know the exact details, but news reports do
suggest that yes, they were gambling with federally insured deposits, which
just really puts the icing on the cake here.

Moyers: Do we know yet what is Dimon's culpability? Is it conceivable
to you that a risk this big would have been incurred without his approval?

Johnson: It seems very strange and quite a stretch. And he did tell
investors, when he reported on first quarter earnings in April, that he was
aware of the situation, aware of the trade -- he called
it a "tempest in a teacup," and, therefore, not something
to worry about.

Moyers: He's been Wall Street's point man in their campaign against
tighter regulation of derivatives and proprietary trading. Were derivatives at
the heart of this gamble?

Johnson: Yes, according to reliable reports, this was a so-called
"hedging" strategy that turned out to be no more than a gamble, but the
people involved perhaps didn't understand that or maybe they understood it and
covered it up. It was absolutely about a bet on extremely complex derivatives
and the interesting question is who failed to understand exactly what they were
getting into. And how did Jamie Dimon, who has a reputation that he burnishes
more than anybody else for being the number one expert risk manager in the
world -- how did he miss this one?

Moyers:I've been reading a lot of stories today about members of the
House, Republicans in particular, saying this doesn't change their opinion at
all that we've got to still diminish regulation. What do you think about that?

Johnson: I think that it is a recipe for disaster. Look, deregulating
or not regulating during the boom is exactly how you get into bailouts in the
bust. The goal should be to make all the banks small enough and simple enough
to fail. End the government subsidies here. And when I talk to people on the
intellectual right, Bill, they get this, as do people on the intellectual left.
The problem is, the political right largely doesn't want to go there because of
the donations. I'm afraid some people, not all, but some people on the
political left don't want to go there either.

Moyers: The Washington Post reported that the Justice
Department has launched
a criminal investigation into JPMorgan's trading loss. Have you spotted -- and
I know this is sensitive -- but have you spotted anything in the story so far
that suggests the possibility of criminality? Dodd-Frank is not in existence
yet, so where would any possibility of criminality come from?

Johnson: Well Dodd-Frank is in existence but the rules have not been
written and therefore not implemented. So yes, it is hard to violate those
rules in their current state. And many of those rules, by the way, violation
would be a civil penalty, not a criminal penalty. If you violate a securities
law -- if you've mislead investors, if there was material adverse information
that was not disclosed in an appropriate and timely manner -- that's a very
serious offence traditionally.

I have to say that the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange
Commission have not been very good at enforcing securities law in recent years,
including and specifically since the financial crisis. I am skeptical that this
will change. But if they have an investigation that reveals all of the details
of what happened and how it happened, that would be extremely informative and
show us, I believe, that the risk management approach and attitudes on Wall
Street are deeply flawed and leading us towards a big crisis.

Moyers: So what are people to do, Simon? What can people do now in
response to this?

Johnson: Well, I think you have to look for politicians who are
proposing solutions, and look on the right and on the left. I see Elizabeth
Warren, running for the Senate in Massachusetts, who is saying we should bring
back Glass-Steagall to separate commercial banking from investment banking. I
see Tom Hoenig, who is not a politician, he's a regulator, he's the former
president of the Kansas City Fed, and he's now one of the top two people at the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC. He is saying that big banks
should no longer have trading desks. That's the same sort of idea that
Elizabeth Warren is expressing. We need a lot more people to focus on this and
to make this an issue for the elections.

And I would say in this context, Bill, it's very important not to be
distracted. I understand for example, Speaker Boehner, the Republican Speaker
of the House of Representatives, is proposing to have another conflict over the
debt ceiling in the near future. This is the politics of distraction. This is
refusing to recognize that a huge part of our fiscal problems today and in the
future are due to these risks within the financial system that are allowed
because the people running the biggest banks hand out massive campaign
contributions across the political spectrum.

Moyers: Are you saying that this financial crisis, so-called, is at
heart a political crisis?

Johnson: Yes, exactly. I think that a few people, particularly in and
around the financial system, have become too powerful. They were allowed to
take a lot of risk, and they did massive damage to the economy -- more than
eight million jobs lost. We're still struggling to get back anywhere close to
employment levels where we were before 2008. And they've done massive damage to
the budget. This damage to the budget is long lasting; it undermines the budget
when we need it to be stronger because the society is aging. We need to support
Social Security and support Medicare on a fair basis. We need to restore and
rebuild revenue, revenue that was absolutely devastated by the financial
crisis. People need to understand the link between what the banks did and the
budget. And too many people fail to do that. "Oh, it's too complicated. I
don't want to understand the details, I don't want to spend time with it."
That's a mistake, a very big mistake. You're playing into the hands of a few
powerful people in the society who want private benefit and social loss.

Why hasn’t Obama been impeached? His violations
of our borders laws, inducing illegals to vote, sabotage of jobs for Americans,
connections to criminal banksters…. WHAT DOES IT TAKE?

NO WORKS IN THE CORRUPT OBAMA WHITE HOUSE THAT IS NOT CONNECTED TO THE
BANKSTERS THAT OWN OBAMA, OR THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!

THE REASON OBAMA BROUGHT IN DALEY WAS BECAUSE WAS FROM JPMORGAN, AND AN
ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS.

For much of Obama’s tenure, Jamie Dimon
was known as the White House’s “favorite banker.” According to White House
logs, Dimon visited the White House at least 18 times, often to talk to his
former subordinate at JPMorgan, William Daley, who had been named White House
chief of staff by Obama after the Democratic rout in the 2010 elections.

OBAMA PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL
BANKSTER DONORS NO PRISON TIME AND NO REAL REGULATION. DID HE DELIVER?

The JPMorgan scandal also throws into relief the government’s failure to
prosecute those responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown. Despite
overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing and criminality uncovered by two federal
investigations last year, those responsible have been shielded from
prosecution.

Records show that four out of Obama's top
five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).

The JPMorgan debacle

15 May 2012

The economic and political fallout from JPMorgan Chase’s sudden announcement
last Thursday night that it lost more than $2 billion from speculative bets on
credit derivatives continued to grow on Monday. The biggest US bank announced
the forced retirement of Ina Drew, who headed up the bank’s London-based Chief
Investment Office, which placed huge bets on the creditworthiness of a
collection of US corporations. Other top executives and traders are expected to
be sacked or demoted.

The bank’s shares fell another 3.2 percent, bringing its two-day market capitalization
loss to nearly $19 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported that
JPMorgan was prepared for a total loss of more than $4 billion over the next
year from its soured stake in credit default swaps—the same investment vehicle
that played a central role in the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the
government bailout of insurance giant American International Group (AIG) in
September of 2008.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program on Sunday, JPMorgan CEO
Jamie Dimon sought to present the loss as an innocent mistake, resulting from
“errors, sloppiness and bad judgment.” Only a month ago, Dimon, who has led the
public campaign by Wall Street against even the mildest restrictions on
speculative banking practices, dismissed warnings over the massive bets being
made by his Chief Investment Office as “a complete tempest in a teapot.”

The scale of the loss and the denials that preceded it raise the likelihood
that banking rules and laws against investor fraud and deception were breached.

President Obama, however, rushed to the defense of JPMorgan and Dimon,
declaring on a daytime television talk show Monday that JPMorgan was “one of
the best managed banks there is” and Dimon was “one of the smartest bankers we
got.” At the same time he cited the bank’s loss as a vindication of the
Dodd-Frank financial regulatory bill that he signed into law in July of 2010.
“This is why we passed Wall Street reform,” he said.

In fact, the JPMorgan debacle demonstrates that nearly four years after
the Wall Street crash nothing has changed for the financial aristocracy. No
measures have been taken to rein in the banks, which received trillions of
dollars in government handouts, guarantees and cheap loans. The same forms of
speculation and outright swindling that led to the financial meltdown and the
worst economic crisis since the Great Depression continue unabated.

The big banks, such as JPMorgan, have
increased their stranglehold over the US economy. They have recorded bumper
profits by withholding credit from consumers and small businesses, keeping
unemployment high, while speculating on credit default swaps and other exotic
financial instruments that drain resources from the real economy. On this
basis, bank executives and traders, including those at bailed-out institutions,
have continued to rake in eight-figure compensation packages. Last year, Ina
Drew made $14 million, and Jamie Dimon took in $26 million.

The Dodd-Frank law trumpeted by Obama is a fraud, an attempt to give the
appearance of financial reform while enabling the banks to continue their
parasitic and criminal activities. A case in point is the so-called Volcker
Rule, named after the former chairman of the Federal Reserve and economic
adviser to the Obama White House, Paul Volcker.

The rule, incorporated into the Dodd-Frank Act and supposedly one of its
most daring provisions, ostensibly bars proprietary trading—speculation by a
bank on its own account—by commercial banks whose consumer deposits are
guaranteed by the federal government. The idea is to prevent government-insured
banks from speculating with depositors’ money.

But the regulation as drafted by federal regulators—under pressure from the
Federal Reserve and Obama’s treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, as well as
the banks—would actually allow the type of speculative bet made by JPMorgan in
the guise of a “hedge” to offset risk in the bank’s overall investment
portfolio.

The Volcker Rule, whose precise form is yet to be announced, will do nothing
to halt speculation by government-backed banks using small depositors’ money.

The JPMorgan scandal also throws into relief the government’s failure to
prosecute those responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown. Despite
overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing and criminality uncovered by two federal
investigations last year, those responsible have been shielded from
prosecution.

When Iowa Senator Charles Grassley submitted a letter to the Justice
Department earlier this year asking how many bank executives had been
prosecuted in response to the financial crisis, the Justice Department replied
it did not know because it was not keeping a list.

According to a study by Syracuse University, however, federal financial
fraud prosecutions have fallen to 20-year lows under the Obama administration,
and are down 39 percent since 2003. Under Obama, the number of financial fraud
cases has fallen to one-third the level of the Clinton administration.

These facts demonstrate the de facto dictatorship exercised by the financial
aristocracy over the entire political system and both major parties. The Obama
administration, in particular, is an instrument of the most powerful financial
institutions. It has focused its efforts on protecting and increasing the
wealth of the privileged elite while utilizing the crisis to permanently slash
the wages and living standards of the working class.

For much of Obama’s tenure, Jamie Dimon was known as the White House’s
“favorite banker.” According to White House logs, Dimon visited the White House
at least 18 times, often to talk to his former subordinate at JPMorgan, William
Daley, who had been named White House chief of staff by Obama after the
Democratic rout in the 2010 elections.

The incestuous and corrupt relations between Wall Street, the Obama
administration and the entire political system underscore the necessity for the
working class to build its own mass socialist movement to fight for its
interests in opposition to the ruling elite.

The bankers responsible for the financial crisis, including Dimon and his
co-conspirators, must be held criminally liable for their lawlessness and held
accountable for the social suffering that has resulted from their actions. The
ill-gotten trillions accumulated by the banks must be expropriated, with full
protection for small depositors and small businesses, and used to provide
decent jobs, housing, health care and education for all.

There is no way to rein in the banks and end their socially destructive
activities within the framework of the capitalist system. The only way to stop
the fraud and parasitism that go on every day on Wall Street is to nationalize
the banks and run them as democratically controlled public utilities.

Andre Damon and Barry Grey

FACT: JP MORGAN IS ONE OF BANKSTER-BOUGHT OBAMA’S BIGGEST PAYMASTERS! HE’S
PROMISED THEM NO PRISON TIME AND NO REAL REGULATION.

THERE IS A REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS INVESTED HEAVILY IN OBAMA’S CORRUPT
ADMINISTRATION!

Records show that four out of Obama's top
five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).

Obama:
JPMorgan Is 'One of the Best-Managed Banks'

By Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 31 mins
ago

Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the …

Lou Rocco / ABC News

Just hours after a top JPMorgan
Chase executive retired in the wake of a stunning $2 billion trading
loss, President Obama told the hosts of
ABC's "The View" that the bank's risky bets exemplified the need for Wall Street reform.

"JPMorgan
is one of the best managed banks there is. Jamie
Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got and they
still lost $2 billion and counting," the president said. "We don't
know all the details. It's going to be investigated, but this is why we passed Wall Street reform."

The full interview
airs on "The View" Tuesday on ABC at 11 a.m. ET

While a powerhouse like JPMorgan might be able to
weather an error that the bank's own CEO called "egregious," the
president questioned what might happen to smaller institutions in similar
situations.

"This is one of the best managed banks. You
could have a bank that isn't as strong, isn't as profitable managing those same
bets and we might have had to step in," he said. "That's why Wall
Street reform is so important."

While touting his efforts to rein in the Wall
Street behavior that led to the massive taxpayer bailout of the banks following
the financial crisis, he noted his administration is still fighting for tough reform.

Pivoting to November, the president said Wall
Street reform is one of the many critical areas where he and his Republican
challenger, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, have a different vision for
the future.

The president's full interview airs Tuesday on
"The View." Tune into "World News with Diane Sawyer"
tonight for more.

Nicole
GelinasIt’s Not About Jamie DimonWe
should look to markets, not men, to govern the economy.
14 May 2012

On
Meet the Press yesterday, JPMorgan
Chase chief Jamie Dimon epitomized what’s wrong with America’s approach to the
financial crisis. The American media and political elite remain obsessed with
personalities, looking for heroes and villains instead of focusing on what we
really need: the dispassionate rule of law that would allow free markets to
flourish. Meet the Press is for politicians, and Dimon performed like a
model one. He spoke in short sentences and apologized directly: “I was dead
wrong,” he offered, for having made a “terrible, egregious mistake.”
Specifically, last Thursday, JPMorgan announced a $2 billion trading loss on a derivatives bet.

Theoretically,
anyway, such a loss should be a matter between the bank and investors, not TV
fodder. Yet Dimon’s business—too-big-to-fail banking—is no ordinary
business. Washington’s willingness to subsidize failure means that Dimon’s job
is as much political risk management as financial risk management. Because JPMorgan depends
on Uncle Sam’s backing, one of Dimon’s key constituencies is politicians and
government regulators. And one way to charm regulators—and the voters who elect
the politicians—is through a killer interview.

In
October 2008, the Bush administration, not normally a fan of government
expropriation, forced nine big banks, including Dimon’s, to
accept $125 billion in TARP money. The banks were deemed so important that they
had to take the money to protect them against failure, whether they wanted it
or not. Since
then, the banks and the government have stayed bound together. President
Obama’s Dodd-Frank financial reform law, enacted two summers ago, has tied the
two sides closer still. The problems that led to the financial crisis, remember,
included investors’ perception—honed over two decades of smaller-scale
bailouts—that big banks were too big to fail. Dodd-Frank has given such banks
an official title: “systemically important financial institutions.”

Another
problem that led to the financial crisis was that, over the years, politicians
and regulators determined that banks had become so good at risk management that
they no longer needed to abide by consistent rules—fixed limits on borrowing,
for example, so that banks could fail without leaving behind so much unpaid
debt that they endangered the economy. Instead, banks could largely do what
their executives wanted, as long as regulators believed, on a case-by-case
basis, that they knew what they were doing.

In
the aftermath of the JPMorgan mess, politicians and reporters have been
invoking the Dodd-Frank law’s “Volcker Rule.” Named after Paul Volcker, the
Federal Reserve chairman from the Carter and Reagan eras, the rule prohibits
banks whose customers benefit from taxpayer-backed deposit insurance from
engaging in “proprietary trading,” or speculation. But the Volcker Rule isn’t a
rule at all: it prohibits behavior that has no set definition. Twenty-two
months after Dodd-Frank became law, regulators have delayed enforcing the
rule
because they still cannot figure out what proprietary trading really is.
Consider how JPMorgan lost all that money: creating derivatives that let it
sell billions of dollars’ worth of protection against the risk that some
corporate securities would default. That sure doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Banks, because they’re lenders, are already at risk if people and companies
default in droves.

But
does selling such synthetic “insurance” constitute proprietary trading?
Michigan Senator Carl Levin, who helped draft the Volcker Rule language, says
it does. Bank officials have argued that such behavior is hedging, which would
be okay under Dodd-Frank.

Real
rules could govern Wall Street, but politicians must give regulators the
backing to create and enforce them. Rather than worry about the Volcker Rule,
politicians and reporters should be focusing on derivatives rules. One reason
that Washington had to bail out the financial system four years ago was that
financial firms such as AIG had taken on virtually infinite risk through the
derivatives markets. Through derivatives, AIG could “sell” protection against
other companies’ defaults with almost no cash down. Lo and behold, that’s what
JPMorgan Chase was doing, too. Regulators should demand that traders—whether
big banks or tiny hedge funds—put a set amount of cash down behind such bets,
curtailing the amount of potential unpaid debt in the financial system.
Regulators should also require that traders execute such transactions on open
clearinghouses and exchanges—so that markets can determine which bets are going
well and which aren’t, and clearinghouses can demand more money from traders to
cover their losses. Such rules empower market signals, not regulatory
micromanagement, to control risk. If such rules were in place, it’s unlikely
Dimon would have visited the White House 18 times in three years, as he would have had
no way to manipulate a restriction that, after all, applied to everyone.

The
best way to stop bailouts is to limit borrowing and demand transparency. When
markets know that financial firms have put a cash cushion behind their bets—and
where the risk behind such bets lies—they’re unlikely to pull their money out
of the financial system en masse, necessitating a government rescue. The
Volcker Rule, by contrast, adds no such protection against future taxpayer rescues;
all it does is unleash regulators to debate, in private, the definitions of
risk.

Dodd-Frank
gave regulators the authority to impose real rules on derivatives, and the
regulators have done so. But lobbyists demanded
and secured exceptions, which could eventually prove the rule. With such
loophole-ridden reform, America has hardly set a good example for Europe, which
lags even further behind in enacting derivatives rules. In fact, JPMorgan Chase
may have executed the derivatives deals from London because the bank perceived
London as a looser environment. Moving this activity around the world so that
financiers can play inconsistent rules against one another does nothing to help
the struggling Western economies.

The
media and the politicians, however, would rather discuss people than arcane
issues like financial rules. Look at how politely—almost obsequiously—NBC’s
David Gregory treated Dimon. Gregory asked Dimon: “Here you are, Jamie Dimon,
you’ve got a sterling reputation. . . . How does a guy like you make this
mistake? If this happened at JPMorgan Chase . . . what about all the other
banks out there? If somebody else made a mistake like this, would we be again
talking about too big to fail and taxpayer bailouts?” Then, when asking
delicate questions about potential criminal liability, Gregory unconsciously
switched from “you” to “the bank.” Lowly regulators will hardly be more willing
to take on Dimon and his colleagues.

Focusing
on one man represents bailout thinking. Policymakers continue to be distracted
from the rules needed to protect the economy from the consequences—including
corporate failure—of the bad decisions that individuals can make. Nearly four
years after the financial crisis began, Washington seems to have learned almost
nothing.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan
Institute’s City
Journal. She tweets at @nicolegelinas.

NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN
MORE LOOT FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS THAN OBAMA. HE PROMISED HIS BANKSTERS
NO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION, AND NO REAL REGULATION.

PROFITS FOR BANKSTERS HAVE SOARED
UNDER OBAMA, JUST AS FORECLOSURES HAVE. DURING HIS FIRST 2 YEARS THE BANKSTERS
MADE MORE LOOT THAN ALL 8 UNDER BUSH!

WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?

"In general, these are professional prognosticators," said
Ritsch. "And they may be putting their money on the person they predict
will win, not the candidate they hope will win."

Shaping up to be the most
corrupt
administration in American history:

Obama’s team: Not the
“best of the Washington insiders,” as the liberal media style them, but
rather, a dysfunctional and dangerous conglomerate of business-as-usual
cronies and hacks

In the first two weeks
alone of his infant administration, Obama had made no fewer than 17
exceptions to his “no-lobbyist” rule

Why the fact that the
massive infusion of union dues into his campaign treasury didn’t trouble
him in the least reveals Obama’s credibility as a reformer

The lack of unprecedented
pace of withdrawals and botched appointments -- and how getting through
the confirmation process was no guarantee of ethical cleanliness or
competence, even as Obama’s cheerleaders were glorifying the Greatest
Transition in World History

Inconsistency: How Obama,
erstwhile critic of the campaign finance practice known as “bundling,”
happily accepted more than $350,000 in bundled contributions from
billionaire hedge-fund managers

How Obama broke his
transparency pledge with the very first bill he signed into law -- helping
make hostility to transparency is a running thread through Obama’s cabinet

Joe Biden: It’s not just
that he lies, it’s that he lies so well that you think he really believes
the stuff he makes up

Treasury Secretary
Geithner: His ineptness and epic blundering -- including how he nearly
caused the collapse of the dollar in international trade with a single
remark

The appalling story of
Technology Czar Vivek Kundra, the convicted shoplifter in charge of the
entire federal government’s information security infrastructure

Obama’s “Porker of the
Month” Transportation Secretary, Roy LaHood: An earmark-addicted influence
peddler born and raised on the politics of pay-to-play

SEIU: Responsible for
installing a cabal of hand-chosen officers who exploited their
cash-infused fiefdoms for personal gain and presided over rigged elections
-- in the process, becoming all that they had professed to stand against
as representatives of the downtrodden worker

How Obama lied on his
“Fight the Smears” campaign website when he claimed that he “never
organized with ACORN”

ACORN: How the profound threat
the group poses is not merely ideological or economic -- it’s electoral

ACORN’s own internal
review of shady money transfers among its web of affiliates: How it
underscores concerns that conservatives have long raised about the
organization

Liar, liar, pantsuit on
fire: How Hillary Clinton has already trampled upon her promise not to let
her husband’s financial dealings sway her decisions as Secretary of State

How even a few principled progressives are finally beginning
to question the cult of Obama -- even as Obama sycophants in the
mainstream media continue to celebrate his “hipness” and “swagga”

GET
THIS BOOK!

Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is
Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and
Union Bosses

BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY

Editorial Reviews

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting
Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special
interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting
handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small
businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter
Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White
House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering
corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate
America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.

Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative
needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and
bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its
best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government
swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts
deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big
scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets
bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack.
This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special
interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting
handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small
businesses, and consumers.

Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream
media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and
Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming
he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory
robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:

*
The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell
corporate profits and more government control

* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled
bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda

* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs
presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)

* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the
well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists'

* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country,
as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry,
and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create
make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam.
Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger,
somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book
names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

*Praise for Obamanomics

“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of
progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by
day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative
muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big
business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs,
taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama
years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author

“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this
astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama
administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s
populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone
who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama

“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that
large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs
to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions
of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul

“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his
‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle
and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately
punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as
usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The
Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History

*

·Hardcover:
256 pages

·Publisher:
Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)

·Language:
English

·ISBN-10:
1596986123

·ISBN-13:
978-1596986121

ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED POLITICIANS ARE?

GET THIS BOOK!

Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of
Tax Cheats, Crooks, andCronies

by Michelle Malkin

Editorial Reviews

In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President
Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of
power throughout his administration.

From the Inside Flap

The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office
to kill it.

Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of
turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his
entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force,
New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning,
and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team
Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and
business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:

* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President
Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate
world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives
have benefited mightily

* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including
Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide

* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable
"czars" than any other administration

* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of
embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a
tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons

* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of
taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power

* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the
economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin
lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media
would rather keep hidden.